heard Dare go down just as he finished dressing, for he too was
early that morning. There was more than half an hour before
breakfast-time. He considered a moment, and then went down-stairs. Some
resolutions once made cannot be carried out too quickly.

As he passed through the hall he looked out. The mist of the night
before had sought out every twig and leaflet, and had silvered it to
meet the sun. The rime on the grass looked cool and tempting. Charles's
head ached, and he went out for a moment and stood in the crisp still
air. The rooks were cawing high up. The face of the earth had not
altered during the night. It shimmered and was glad, and smiled at his
grave, care-worn face.

"Hallo!" called a voice; and Ralph's head, with his hair sticking
straight out on every side, was thrust out of a window. "I say, Charles,
early bird you are!"

"Yes," said Charles, looking up and leisurely going in-doors again; "you
are the first worm I have seen."

He found Dare, as he expected, in the drawing-room, and proceeded at
once to the business he had in hand.

"I am glad you are down early," he said. "You are the very man I want."

"Ah!" replied Dare, shaking his head, "when the heart is troubled there
is no sleep, none. All the clocks are heard."

"Possibly. I should not wonder if you heard another in the course of
half an hour, which will mean breakfast. In the mean time----"

"I want no breakfast. A sole cup of----"

"In the mean time," continued Charles, "I have some news for you." And,
disregarding another interruption, he related as shortly as he could the
story of Stephens's recognition of him in the door-way, and the
subsequent revelations in the prison concerning Dare's marriage.

"Where is this man, this Stephens?" said Dare, jumping up. "I will go to
him. I will hear from his own mouth. Where is he?"

"I don't know," replied Charles, curtly. "It is a matter of opinion. He
is dead!"

Dare looked bewildered, and then sank back with a gasp of disappointment
into his chair.

Charles, whose temper was singularly irritable this morning, repeated
with suppressed annoyance the greater part of what he had just said, and
proved to Dare that the fact that Stephens was dead would in no way
prevent the illegality of his marriage being proved.

When Dare had grasped the full significance of that fact he was quite
overcome.

"Am I, then," he gasped--"is it true?--am I free--to marry?"

"Quite free."

Dare burs