et up into the air, fell face forwards, and came sliding
down towards me, clutching at the snow with both hands.

I was trying to stop my two wounds, and began to be conscious of a
swimming in the head. In a moment Giraud was by my side, and clapped a
handful of snow on my cheek. He had been through the winter's
campaign, and this was no new work for him. He tore open my shirt and
pressed snow on the wound in my shoulder, from which the blood was
pumping slowly. I was in a horrid plight, but in my heart knew all the
while that Miste had failed to kill me.

Giraud poured some brandy into my mouth, and I suppose that I was
nearly losing consciousness, for I felt the spirit running into me
like new life.

In a minute or two we began to think of Miste, who was lying on his
face a few yards away.

"All right now?" asked Alphonse, cheerily.

"All right," I answered, rising and going towards the black form of my
enemy.

We turned him over. The eyes were open--large, liquid eyes, of a
peculiarly gentle expression. I had seen them before, in Radley's
Hotel at Southampton, under a gay little Parisian hat. I was down on
my knees in the snow in a moment--all cold with the thought that I had
killed a woman.

But Charles Miste was a man--and a dead one at that. My relief was so
great that I could have shouted aloud. Miste had therefore been within
my grasp at Southampton, only eluding me by a clever trick, carried
out with consummate art. The dead face seemed to wear a smile as I
looked at it.

Alphonse opened the man's shirt, and we looked at the small blue hole
through which my bullet had found his heart. Death must have been very
quick. I closed the gentle eyes, for they seemed to look at me from a
woman's face.

"And now for his pockets!" I said, hardening my heart.

We turned them out one by one. His purse contained but little, and in
an inner pocket some Italian silver, for use across the frontier. He
had thought of everything, this careful scoundrel. In a side pocket,
pinned to the lining of it, I found a flat packet enveloped in
newspaper. This we unfolded hastily. It contained a number of papers.
I opened one of them--a draft for five thousand pounds, drawn by John
Turner on Messrs. Sweed & Carter of New York! I counted the drafts
aloud and had a long task, for they numbered seventy-nine.

[Illustration: "AND NOW FOR HIS POCKETS!" I SAID, HARDENING MY HEART.]

"That," I said, handing them to Giraud, "is the h