lads. You
have your revolvers?"

"Yes," said Don.

We had no time for leave-taking. He was at once called away from us.

We left the Government House shortly after that, got our bicycles
and started for the north shore road. Government Hill, where the
road climbed through a deep cut in the solid rock, was thronged with
carriages, and with cyclists walking up the hill. Most of the
traffic was going in one direction--refugees leaving this proximity
to the enemy.

We reached the top of the hill, mounted and began the long coast
down. In an hour and a half or less we would be home.... Ah, if one
could only lift the veil which hides even the immediate future, upon
the brink of which we must always stand unseeing!

The north-shore road had the rocky seacoast upon our left--calm
moonlit ocean across which in this direction lay the Carolinas some
seven hundred miles away. We had gone, perhaps three miles from
Hamilton. The road was less crowded here. A group of apparitions had
been seen in the neighborhood of the Aquarium, which was ahead of
us, and most of the refugees were taking the middle road along
Harrington Sound in the center of the island.

But we decided to continue straight on. It was shorter.

"And there will be more police along here," Don reasoned.

Heaven knows we did not feel in immediate danger. Cycling soldiers
passed us at frequent intervals, giving us the news of what lay
ahead. And we both had revolvers.

* * * * *

We came presently to the bottom of one of the many steep little
hills up which it is difficult to ride. We were walking up the
grade, pushing our machines with Jane between us. A group of
soldiers came coasting down the hill, but when we were half-way up
they had passed out of sight. It chanced at the moment that we were
alone on the road. No house was near us. The ocean to our left lay
at the bottom of a fifty-foot rocky cliff; to the right was a thick
line of oleander trees, heavy with bloom.

Ahead of us, to the right within the line of oleanders, the glowing
white figure of an apparition was visible. We stopped, out of breath
from the climb, and stood by the roadside.

"See it there?" Don murmured. "Let's wait and watch it a moment."

One may get used to anything. We were not frightened. The figure, no
more than twenty feet ahead of us, stood partly within a tree-trunk.
It could not materialize there. It was the figure of a man, with
helmet an