top of a rise by now,
sinking deep and noiseless into the soft sand. It was too dark to see
what was below; all was shadow, black shadow--or was it a blackness
more substantial than shadow?

The cloud passed from off the moon's face, the light shone out once
more, turning the sand to silver. All the great empty space, where the
dying wind still throbbed, was white silver, except down in the hollow
where, black and still, lay the man who had followed the line of least
resistance.

CHAPTER XXIII

PAYMENT AND RECEIPT

On the day of Captain Polkington's funeral, a letter was brought to
White's Cottage. Julia herself took it in, and when she saw that it
was from Holland she asked the postman to wait a minute as she would
be glad if he would post a letter for her. He sat down, nothing loth;
the cottage was the last place on his round and he never minded a rest
there. He waited while Julia went up-stairs with her letter. She
opened it before she got to her room and barely read the contents;
there was enclosed a cheque for thirty pounds, the price of "The Good
Comrade."

It had come, then, at last, this money for which she had been waiting
two years--but too late. The man in whose name she would have paid the
debt lay dead. She had planned to clear him without his knowledge,
reinstate him in the good opinion of his debtor without letting her
hand be seen; and she could not, for he was dead, and there was no
hand but hers, and no name to clear. It was not a week too late, yet
so much, so bitterly much. Too late for her cherished plan, too late
for any of the things she had hoped, too late for triumph, or joy, or
satisfaction; too late to demonstrate the once hoped for equality; too
late for the fulfilling of anything but a dogged purpose. For a moment
she looked at the cheque, feeling the irony which had sent her the
means of paying his debt now that her father lay in his coffin,
indifferent to his good name and his honour; unable, alike, to clear
or be cleared, to wrong or be wronged; removed by kindly death from
the scope of earthly judgment, even the just thoughts of one who had
suffered on his account.

She put down the cheque and pencilled some hasty words--"In payment of
Captain Polkington's debt (to Mr. Rawson-Clew) discharged by Hubert
Farquhar Rawson-Clew on the--November 19--"

So she wrote, then she put the slip with the cheque in an envelope and
addressed it to the London club where the explosive ha