e clamouring for... ah... separation. And, to
be sure, I trust you'll hang the prisoner, for if you don't..."

Lord Stowell shivered, and said suddenly with haste, "Mr. Oldham,
address yourself to Sir Robert."

I was almost happy; the cloven hoof had peeped so damningly out. The
little man bowed briskly to the old judge, asked for a chair, sat
himself down, and arranged his coat-tails.

"As I was saying," he prattled on, "the trouble and the worry that this
man caused to His Grace, myself, and Admiral Rowley were inconceivable.
You have no idea, you... ah... can't conceive. And no wonder, for, as it
turned out, the island was simply honeycombed by his spies and agents.
You have no idea; people who seemed most respectable, people we
ourselves had dealings with..."

He rattled on at immense length, the barrister taking huge pinches
of yellow snuff, and smiling genially with the air of a horse-trainer
watching a pony go faultlessly through difficult tricks. Every now and
then he flicked his whip.

"Mr. Oldham, you saw the prisoner three times. If it does not overtax
your memory pray tell us." And the little creature pranced off in a new
direction.

"Tax my memory! Gad, I like that. You remember a man who has had your
blood as near as could be, don't you?"

I had been looking at him eagerly, but my interest faded away now. It
was going to be the old confusing of my identity with Nikola's. And yet
I seemed to know the little beggar's falsetto; it was a voice one does
not forget.

"Remember!" he squeaked. "Gad, gentlemen of the jury, he came as near as
possible------You have no idea what a ferocious devil it is."

I was wondering why on earth Nichols should have wanted to kill such a
little thing. Because it was obvious that it must have been Nichols.

"As near as possible murdered myself and Admiral Rowley and a Mr.
Topnambo, a most enlightened and loyal... ah... inhabitant of the
island, on the steps of a public inn."

I had it then. It was the little man David Mac-donald had rolled down
the steps with, that night at the Ferry Inn on the Spanish Town road.

"He was lying in wait for us with a gang of assassins. I was stabbed
on the upper lip. I lost so much blood... had to be invalided... cannot
think of horrible episode without shuddering."

He had seen me then, and when Ramon ("a Spaniard who was afterwards
proved to be a spy of El Demonio's--of the prisoner's. He was hung
since") had driven me from the pl