"Well, if you mean by that," retorted Davis, "that you and I are going
to start for a ten years' friendship, I declare off, and say it's no
match. I told you what brought me here, and now I want _you_ to say how
I 'm to go back again. Where are these same papers?--answer me that."

"Some are in the hands of Conway's lawyers; some are in the Crimea,
carded away surreptitiously by a person who was once in my confidence;
some are, I suspect, in the keeping of Conway's mother, in Wales--"

"And some are locked up in that red box there," said Grog, with a
defiant look.

"Not one. I can swear by all that is most solemn and awful there's not a
document there that concerns the cause." As Dunn spoke these words, his
voice trembled with intense agitation, and he grew sickly pale.

"What if I wouldn't believe you on your oath?" broke in Grog, whose keen
eyes seemed actually to pierce the other's secret thoughts. "It was n't
to-day, or yesterday, that you and _I_ learned how to dodge an oath.
Open that box there; I 'll have a look through it for myself."

"That you never shall," said Dunn, fiercely, as he grasped the bundle of
keys that lay before him and placed them in his breast-pocket.

"Come, I like your pluck, Dunn, though it won't serve your turn this
time. I 'll either see that box opened before me now, or I'll carry it
off with me,--which shall it be?"

"Neither, by Heaven!" cried Dunn, whose passion was now roused
effectually.

"We 'll, first of all, get these out of the way; they're ugly
playthings," said Davis, as with a spring he seized the pistols
and hurled them through the open window; in doing so, however, he
necessarily leaned forward, and partly turned his back towards Dunn.
With a gesture quick as lightning, Dunn drew a loaded pistol from his
breast, and, placing the muzzle almost close to the other's head, drew
the trigger. A quick motion of the neck made the ball glance from the
bone of the skull, and passing down amongst the muscles of the neck,
settle above the shoulder. Terrible as the wound was, Davis sprang upon
him with the ferocity of a tiger. Not a word nor a cry escaped his lips,
as, in all the agony of his suffering, he seized Dunn by the throat
with one hand, while, drawing from his breast a heavy life-preserver, he
struck him on the head with the other. A wild scream,--a cry for help,
half smothered in the groan that followed, rang out, and Dunn reeled
from his seat and fell dead on the