? Me spine's a rasping
holes in me necktie, and I'm so flat you could slip me into a pillar
box and they'd take me home for a penny stamp."

But Cleek made no reply. Wet and spent after his fierce struggle with
the whirling fury he had just escaped, he lay looking up into Ailsa's
eyes as she came to him with the sobbing child close pressed to her
bosom and all heaven in her beaming face.

"It is not the 'funeral wreath' after all, you see, Miss Lorne," he
said. "It came near to being it; but--it is not, it is not. I wonder,
oh, I wonder!"

Then he laughed the foolish, vacuous laugh of a man whose thoughts are
too happy for the banality of words.

CHAPTER XXIII

It was midnight and after. In the close-curtained library of Chepstow
House, Cleek, with his little lordship sleeping in his arms, sat in
solemn conclave with Lady Chepstow, Captain Hawksley, and Maverick
Narkom; and while they talked, Ailsa, like a restless spirit, wandered
to and fro, now lifting the curtains to peep out into the darkness, now
listening as if her whole life's hope lay in the coming of some expected
sound. And in her veins there burned a fever of suspense.

"So you failed to get the rascals, did you, Mr. Narkom?" Cleek was
saying. "I feared as much; but I couldn't get word to you sooner. We
injured the machine in that mad race to the mill, and of course we had
to come at a snail's pace afterwards. I'm sorry we didn't get
Margot--sorrier still that that hound Merode got away. They are bound to
make more trouble before the race is run. Not for her ladyship, however,
and not for this dear little chap. Their troubles are at an end, and the
sacred son will be a sacred son no longer."

"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do tell me what you mean," implored Lady Chepstow. "Do
tell me how--"

"Doctor Fordyce, at last!" struck in Ailsa excitedly, as the door-bell
and knocker clashed and the butler's swift footsteps went along the
hall. "Now we shall know, Mr. Cleek--oh, now we shall know for certain!"

"And so shall all the world," he replied as the door opened and the
doctor was ushered into the room. "I don't think you were ever so
welcome anywhere or at any time before, doctor," he added with a smile.
"Come and look at this little chap. Bonny little specimen of a
Britisher, isn't he?"

"Yes; but my dear sir, I--I was under the impression that I was called
to a scene of excitement; and you seem as peaceful as Eden here. The
constable who came for me s