e could not forget his first impression of the dark-faced half-breed,
nor the grip in which they had pledged their fealty. He had accepted
Jean as one of ten thousand--a man he would have trusted to the ends of
the earth, and yet he recalled moments now when he had seen strange
fires smouldering far back in the forest man's eyes. The change in Jean
alone he felt that he might have diagnosed, but almost simultaneously
with his discovery of this change he had met Adare's wife--and she had
puzzled him even more than the half-breed.

Restlessly he moved to his door again, opened it, and looked down the
hall. The door of Josephine's room was closed, and he reentered his
room. For a moment he stood facing the window. In the same instant
there came the report of a rifle and the crashing of glass. A shower of
shot-like particles struck his face. He heard a dull smash behind him,
and then a stinging, red-hot pain shot across his arm, as if a whiplash
had seared his naked flesh. He heard the shot, the crashing glass, the
strike of the bullet behind him before he felt the pain--before he
reeled back toward the wall. His heel caught in a rug and he fell. He
knew that he was not badly hurt, but he crouched low, and with his
right hand drew his automatic and levelled it at the window.

Never in his life had his blood leaped more quickly through his body
than it did now. It was not merely excitement--the knowledge that he
had been close to death, and had escaped. From out of the darkness Jean
Croisset had shot at him like a coward. He did not feel the burn of the
scratch on his arm as he jumped to his feet. Once more he ran swiftly
through the hall. At the end door he looked back. Apparently the shot
had not alarmed the occupants of Josephine's room, to whom the report
of a rifle--even at night--held no special significance.

Another moment and Philip was outside. It had stopped snowing, and the
clouds were drifting away from under the moon. Crouched low, his pistol
level at his side, he ran swiftly in the direction from which the shot
must have come. The moon revealed the dark edge of the forest a hundred
yards away, and he was sure that his attempted murderer had stood
somewhere between Adare House and the timber when he fired. He was not
afraid of a second shot. Even caution was lost in his mad desire to
catch Jean red-handed and choke a confession of several things from his
lips. If Jean had suddenly risen out of the snow he woul