urs the grave old fellow, who had faced death a hundred
times, had passed through a crisis of agony and despair. He hated
himself, and would even have welcomed death, would have courted it at
his own hands, had not these jeers of the doctor's rung in his ears. And,
after all, he had decided that suicide was only a coward's death. The man
who takes his own life to avoid exposure is always despised by his
friends.

So he had lived, and had come down there in response to the doctor's
request over the telephone, resolved to face the music, if for the last
time.

He sat in the shabby old arm-chair and firmly refused to carry out the
doctor's suggestion. But Weirmarsh, with his innate cunning, presented to
him a picture of exposure and degradation which held him horrified.

"I should have thought, Sir Hugh, that in face of what must inevitably
result you would not risk exposure," he said. "Of course, it lies with
you entirely," he added with an unconcerned air.

"I'm thinking of my family," the old officer said slowly.

"Of the disgrace if the truth were known, eh?"

"No; of the suspicion, nay, ruin and imprisonment, that would fall upon
another person," replied Sir Hugh.

"No suspicion can be aroused if you are careful, I repeat," exclaimed
Weirmarsh impatiently. "Not a breath of suspicion has ever fallen upon
you up to the present, has it? No, because you have exercised foresight
and have followed to the letter the plans I made. I ask you, when you
have followed my advice have you ever gone wrong--have you ever taken one
false step?"

"Never--since the first," replied the old soldier in a hard, bitter tone.

"Then I urge you to continue to follow the advice I give you, namely, to
agree to the terms."

"And who will be aware of the matter?"

"Only myself," was Weirmarsh's reply. "And I think that you may trust a
secret with me?"

The old man made no reply, and the crafty doctor wondered whether by
silence he very reluctantly gave his consent.

CHAPTER VIII

PAUL LE PONTOIS

THERE is in the far north-west of France a broad, white highway which
runs from Chalons, crosses the green Meuse valley, mounts the steep,
high, tree-fringed lands of the Cotes Lorraines, and goes almost straight
as an arrow across what was, before the war, the German frontier at
Mars-la-Tour into quaint old Metz, that town with ancient streets,
musical chimes, and sad monument to Frenchmen who fell in the disastrous
never-to-b