as tall. You seem very much interested in him. No
doubt Reynolds could tell you anything you wish to know. Here he is;
you had better ask him."

A grey-headed man-servant had entered, bearing a lamp. Mrs. de Vaux
turned to him.

"Reynolds, Mr. Paul is interested in hearing about the priest who
spent so much time looking over the Abbey yesterday. Can you describe
him?"

Reynolds set down the lamp and turned respectfully around. "Not very
well, I'm afraid, sir," he said doubtfully. "They all seem so much
alike, you know, sir, in those long gowns. He was tall, rather thin,
and no hair on his face at all. I can't say that I noticed anything
else, except that he spoke in rather a foreign accent."

"You are sure he was a priest, I suppose," Paul asked carelessly. "We
hear so much now of impostors, and of things being stolen from places
of interest, that it makes one feel suspicious."

"I am quite sure he was no impostor, sir." Reynolds answered
confidently. "He was too interested in the place for that. He knew its
history better than any one who has ever been here in my day. If he
had been one of those sneaking sort of fellows, looking about for what
he could get, he would have offered me money, and tried to get rid of
me for a time, I think, sir."

"That's true," Paul remarked. "Were you with him all the time, then?"

"Very nearly, sir. He did not like my leaving him at all. He was
afraid of missing something worth seeing. Besides, he did not ask to
come into the house at all, not even to see the pictures. He spent all
his time in the ruins.

"That ends the matter, of course," Paul answered shortly. "There is
nothing out there to attract pilferers. Sorry I said anything about
it."

"He asked whether you spent much of your time here, and when you would
be down again, sir," Reynolds remarked, as he turned to quit the room.

Paul looked up, and then stood quite still for a moment without
speaking. A great fear had fallen upon him. Out of the shadows of
the past, he seemed to see again that deathbed scene, and the tragedy
which had brought down the curtain upon two lives. Almost he could
fancy himself again upon his yacht, with the salt sea spray beating
against his face, and the white breakers hissing and seething around
him, as they made the dangerous passage towards that faint light,
which flickered and gleamed in the distant monastery tower. They are
safe! They reach the land; they are hurried into that great, g