yed such
anxiety to be gone that I deemed his errand a suspicious one, and broke
the seal of that letter. You may thank God, Galliard, every night of
your life that I did so."

"Was this youth Kenneth Stewart?" asked Crispin.

"You have guessed it."

"D--n the lad," he began furiously. Then repressing himself, he sighed,
and in an altered tone, "No, no," said he. "I have grievously wronged
him! have wrecked his life--or at least he thinks so now. I can hardly
blame him for seeking to be quits with me."

"The lad," returned Hogan, "must be himself a dupe. He can have had no
suspicion of the message he carried. Let me read it to you; it will make
all clear."

Hogan drew a taper nearer, and spreading the paper upon the table, he
smoothed it out, and read:

HONOURED SIR,

The bearer of the present should, if he rides well, outstrip another
messenger I have dispatched to you upon a fool's errand, with a letter
addressed to one Mr. Lane at the sign of the Anchor. The bearer of that
is none other than the notorious malignant, Sir Crispin Galliard, by
whose hand your son was slain under your very eyes at Worcester, whose
capture I know that you warmly desire and with whom I doubt not you will
know how to deal. To us he has been a source of no little molestation;
his liberty, in fact, is a perpetual menace to our lives. For some
eighteen years this Galliard has believed dead a son that my cousin bore
him. News of this son, whom I have just informed him lives--as indeed he
does--is the bait wherewith I have lured him to your address. Forewarned
by the present, I make no doubt you will prepare to receive him
fittingly. But ere that justice he escaped at Worcester be meted out
to him at Tyburn or on Tower Hill, I would have you give him that news
touching his son which I am sending him to you to receive. Inform him,
sir, that his son, Jocelyn Marleigh...

Hogan paused, and shot a furtive glance at Galliard. The knight was
leaning forward now, his eyes strained, his forehead beaded with
perspiration, and his breathing heavy.

"Read on," he begged hoarsely.

His son, Jocelyn Marleigh, is the bearer of this letter, the man whom
he has injured and who detests him, the youth with whom he has, by a
curious chance, been in much close association, and whom he has known as
Kenneth Stewart.

"God!" gasped Crispin. Then with sudden vigour, "Oh, 'tis a lie," he
cried, "a fresh invention of that lying brain to torture me."

Hog