rms and ran to the
door, and Jean Croisset came between them, with the wild bearded man
still staring over his shoulder.

"M'seur, will you come with us?" said Jean.

The bearded man dropped back into the thick gloom, and without speaking
Howland followed Croisset, his eyes on the shadowy form of Meleese. The
ghostly faces turned from the light, and the tread of their retreating
feet marked the passage through the blackness. Jean fell back beside
Howland, the huge bulk of the bearded man three paces ahead. A dozen
steps more and they came to a stair down which a light shone. The
Frenchman's hand fell detainingly on Howland's arm, and when a moment
later they reached the top of the stairs all had disappeared but Jean
and the bearded man. Dawn was breaking, and a pale light fell through
the two windows of the room they had entered. On a table burned a lamp,
and near the table were several chairs. To one of these Croisset
motioned the engineer, and as Howland sat down the bearded man turned
slowly and passed through a door. Jean shrugged his shoulders as the
other disappeared.

"_Mon Dieu_, that means that he leaves it all to me," he exclaimed. "I
don't wonder that it is hard for him to talk, M'seur. Perhaps you have
begun to understand!"

"Yes, a little," replied Howland. His heart was throbbing as if he had
just finished climbing a long hill. "That was the man who tried to kill
me. But Meleese--the--" He could go no further. Scarce breathing, he
waited for Jean to speak.

"It is Pierre Thoreau," he said, "eldest brother to Meleese. It is he
who should say what I am about to tell you, M'seur. But he is too full
of grief to speak. You wonder at that? And yet I tell you that a man
with a better soul than Pierre Thoreau never lived, though three times
he has tried to kill you. Do you remember what you asked me a short time
ago, M'seur--if I thought that _you_ were the John Howland who murdered
the father of Meleese sixteen years ago? God's saints, and I did until
hardly more than half an hour ago, when some one came from the South and
exploded a mine under our feet. It was the youngest of the three
brothers. M'seur we have made a great mistake, and we ask your
forgiveness."

In the silence the eyes of the two men met across the table. To Howland
it was not the thought that his life was saved that came with the
greatest force, but the thought of Meleese, the knowledge that in that
hour when all seemed to be lost she w