ly, and had a thirst for
action that drove us to do something, right or wrong, rather than endure
the agony of waiting. Moreover, as we were both convinced that the hollows
of the links were alive with hidden spies upon our movements, we hoped
that our appearance with the box might lead to a parley, and, perhaps, a
compromise.

It was nearly three when we issued from the pavilion. The rain had taken
off; the sun shone quite cheerfully. I had never seen the gulls fly so
close about the house or approach so fearlessly to human beings. On the
very doorstep one flapped heavily past our heads, and uttered its wild cry
in my very ear.

"There is an omen for you," said Northmour, who like all freethinkers was
much under the influence of superstition. "They think we are already
dead."

I made some light rejoinder, but it was with half my heart; for the
circumstance had impressed me.

A yard or two before the gate, on a patch of smooth turf, we set down the
dispatch box; and Northmour waved a white handkerchief over his head.
Nothing replied. We raised our voices, and cried aloud in Italian that we
were there as ambassadors to arrange the quarrel, but the stillness
remained unbroken save by the seagulls and the surf. I had a weight at my
heart when we desisted; and I saw that even Northmour was unusually pale.
He looked over his shoulder nervously, as though he feared that some one
had crept between him and the pavilion door.

"By God," he said in a whisper, "this is too much for me!"

I replied in the same key: "Suppose there should be none, after all!"

"Look there," he returned, nodding with his head, as though he had been
afraid to point.

I glanced in the direction indicated; and there, from the northern quarter
of the Sea-Wood, beheld a thin column of smoke rising steadily against the
now cloudless sky.

"Northmour," I said (we still continued to talk in whispers), "it is not
possible to endure this suspense. I prefer death fifty times over. Stay
you here to watch the pavilion; I will go forward and make sure, if I have
to walk right into their camp."

He looked once again all round him with puckered eyes, and then nodded
assentingly to my proposal.

My heart beat like a sledge hammer as I set out walking rapidly in the
direction of the smoke; and, though up to that moment I had felt chill and
shivering, I was suddenly conscious of a glow of heat all over my body.
The ground in this direction was very uneven;