the bed. His breath came
quickly, and he was shivering; an inarticulate sort of moan came from
his lips.

"Father! you are agitated, and no wonder, to see him here. You had my
letter preparing you; nothing that I could do would stop his coming."

It was Gomez who answered, advancing out of the gloom: "There has been
no letter."

There was an instant's silence. Then the younger man rose up, pale
as death. "God! what a fool I was to trust to mails in this
out-of-the-way hole! Father! I shall never forgive myself. Blind idiot
that I was, to bring him in like this."

It seemed as if no one save he possessed the power of speech. There
was a dead silence. He looked from one to another of the figures in
that silent drama in fast-growing despair. The face of the man whom
he had brought there revealed little, although in a certain way its
expression was remarkable. The lips were parted in a slow,
quiet smile, not in itself sardonic or cruel, although under the
circumstances it seemed so, for it was difficult to associate any
idea of mirth with the scene which was passing in that grim, gloomy
chamber. Something of the awe inseparable from this close approach of
death was visible in the faces of all the other watchers. Not so in
his! It was the contrast which seemed so strange. He stood there, with
his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his long travelling coat,
returning the fixed, glazed stare of the dying man with a sort of
indifferent good humour. Perhaps a very close observer might have
detected a shade of mockery in those soft black eyes and faintly
twitching lips, but the light in the room was too obscure for any one
there to penetrate beneath the apparent indifference. It was he who
broke that deep, tragic silence, and his voice, light and even gay,
struck a strange note in that solemn chamber of death.

"So you are dying, Martin, _mon ami_? How odd! If any one had told me
one short month ago that I should have been here to watch your last
moments, and start you on your journey to hell, bah! how mad I should
have thought them. 'Tis a pleasure I never anticipated."

His words seemed to dissolve the lethargy which his presence had cast
over the dying man. He turned away towards the younger figure by his
side.

"How came he here?" he asked feebly.

"Listen, and I will tell you," was the low reply. "I sought him first
at Monaco, but he had not been heard of there for two years. Then I
found traces of him at Algi