ed; and the mere change suggested
that something might begin.

The sudden shock, indeed, of the new event, the mere interruption of
habit, were serious matters in the psychology of a man, with whom neither
brain nor nerves were normally attuned. Melrose moved restlessly about
his room for a great part of the night. He could not get the haggard
image of Faversham out of his mind; and he was actually, in the end,
tormented by the thought that, in spite of nurses and doctors, he might
die.

Nonsense! One could get a specialist from Edinburgh--from London if
necessary.

And always, by whatever road, his thoughts came back--as it were
leaping--to the gems. Amethyst, sardonyx, crystal--they twinkled and
flashed through all the byways of the brain. So long as the house held
their owner, it held them also. Two of them he had coveted for years.
They must not--they should not--be lost to him again. By what ridiculous
chance had this lad got hold of them?

With the morning came a letter from a crony of Melrose's in London, an
old Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, with whom he had had not a few
dealings in the past.

"Have you heard that that queer fish Mackworth has left his whole cabinet
of gems to a young nephew--his sister's son, to whom they say he has been
much attached? Everything else goes to the British Museum and South
Kensington, and it is a queer business to have left the most precious
thing of all to a youth who in all probability has neither knowledge nor
taste, and may be trusted to turn them into cash as soon as possible. Do
you remember the amethyst Medusa? I could shout with joy when I think of
it! You will be wanting to run the nephew to earth. Make haste!--or
Germany or America will grab them."

But the amethyst Medusa lay safe in her green case in the drawer of the
Riesener table.

V

Duddon Castle in May was an agreeable place. Its park, lying on the
eastern slopes of the mountain mass which includes Skiddaw and
Blencathra, had none of the usual monotony of parks, but was a genuine
"chase," running up on the western side into the heather and rock of the
mountain where the deer were at home, while on the east and south its
splendid oaks stood thick in bracken beside sparkling becks, overlooking
dells and valleys of succulent grass where the sheep ranged at will. The
house consisted of an early Tudor keep, married to a Jacobean house of
rose-coloured brick, which Lady Tatham had since her