ze
upon the keen, hard eyes of Mordacks. "You understand your business,
sir, and would not make such a statement unless you could verify it. But
I hope that you may not find cause to regret that you have treated me
with so little confidence."

"I am not open to that reproach. Dr. Upround, consider my instructions.
I was strictly forbidden to disclose my object until certainty should
be obtained. That being done, I have hastened to apprise you first of
a result which is partly due to your own good offices. Shake hands,
my dear sir, and acquit me of rudeness--the last thing of which I am
capable."

The rector was mollified, and gave his hand to the gallant general
factor. "Allow me to add my congratulations upon your wonderful
success," he said; "but would that I had known it some few hours sooner!
It might have saved you a vast amount of trouble. I might have kept
Robin well within your reach. I fear that he is now beyond it."

"I am grieved to hear you say so. But according to my last instructions,
although he is in strict concealment, I can lay hands upon him when the
time is ripe."

"I fear not. He sailed last night for the Continent, which is a vague
destination, especially in such times as these. But perhaps that was
part of your skillful contrivance?"

"Not so. And for the time it throws me out. I have kept most careful
watch on him. But the difficulty was that he might confound my vigilance
with that of his enemies; take me for a constable, I mean. And perhaps
he has done so, after all. Things have gone luckily for me in the main;
but that murder came in most unseasonably. It was the very thing that
should have been avoided. Sir Duncan will need all his influence there.
Suppose for a moment that young Robin did not do it--"

"Mr. Mordacks, you frighten me. What else could you suppose?"

"Certainly--yes. A parishioner of yours, when not engaged unlawfully
upon the high seas. We heartily hope that he did not do it, and we give
him the benefit of the doubt; in which I shared largely, until it became
so manifest that he was a Yordas. A Yordas has made a point of slaying
his man--and sometimes from three to a dozen men--until within the last
two generations. In the third generation the law revives, as is hinted,
I think, in the Decalogue. In my professional course a large stock of
hereditary trail--so to speak--comes before me. Some families always
drink, some always steal, some never tell lies because they nev