ne to bestow on him. Then I told
him that, through a thing wholly unexpected--the confession of the
criminal himself--no journey to Paris was needful now. I repeated that
strange and gloomy tale, to the loud accompaniment of a rising wind and
roaring sea, while both my friends listened intently.

"Now what can have led him so to come to you?" they asked; "and what do
you mean to do about it?"

"He came to me, no doubt, to propose some bargain, which could not be
made in my cousin's lifetime. But the telling of his tale made him feel
so strange that he really could not remember what it was. As to what
I am to do, I must beg for your opinion; such a case is beyond my
decision." Mrs. Hockin began to reply, but stopped, looking dutifully at
her lord.

"There is no doubt what you are bound to do, at least in one way," the
Major said. "You are a British subject, I suppose, and you must obey
the laws of the country. A man has confessed to you a murder--no matter
whether it was committed twenty years ago or two minutes; no matter
whether it was a savage, cold-blooded, premeditated crime, or whether
there were things to palliate it. Your course is the same; you must hand
him over. In fact, you ought never to have let him go."

"How could I help it?" I pleaded, with surprise. "It was impossible for
me to hold him."

"Then you should have shot him with his own pistol. He offered it to
you. You should have grasped it, pointed it at his heart, and told him
that he was a dead man if he stirred."

"Aunt Mary, would you have done that?" I asked. "It is so easy to talk
of fine things! But in the first place, I had no wish to stop him; and
in the next, I could not if I had."

"My dear," Mrs. Hockin replied, perceiving my distress at this view of
the subject, "I should have done exactly what you did. If the laws
of this country ordain that women are to carry them out against great
strong men, who, after all, have been sadly injured, why, it proves that
women ought to make the laws, which to my mind is simply ridiculous."

CHAPTER LIV

BRUNTSEA DEFEATED

Little sleep had I that night. Such conflict was in my mind about the
proper thing to be done next, and such a war of the wind outside, above
and between the distant uproar of the long tumultuous sea. Of that sound
much was intercepted by the dead bulk of the cliff, but the wind swung
fiercely over this, and rattled through all shelter. In the morning the
storm was furio