g of his watch which obsessed him,
the irregularity in the design of the wall paper, the broken top of
the inkstand on Sir Thomas's desk.

The great, all-important fact had escaped momentarily from his
consciousness. He forgot that Philip de Mountford had been murdered,
and that Luke's stick, bloodstained and damning, had been found inside
the railings of the park.

A cycle of time went by--an eternity, or else a few seconds. Sir
Thomas Ryder pulled open the long drawer of his monumental desk.

Colonel Harris watched him doing it, and long before Sir Thomas took a
certain Something from out the drawer, the colonel knew what that
something would be.

A familiar thing enough. The colonel had seen it over and over again
in Luke de Mountford's hand. A slender stick of rich looking, dark
wood, only very little thicker at the top than at the base and with a
silver band about six inches from the top. On the band the initials L.
de M. daintily engraved.

"Put it away, Tom, for God's sake!" Colonel Harris hardly recognized
his own voice; he had spoken more from a sudden instinct of shrinking
from loathsome objects, than from any real will of his own. One glance
at the stick had been enough. It was thickly coated with mud, and
about six inches from the top there where the silver band showed a
deep dark cleft between it and the length of the stick, there were
other stains--obvious stains of blood.

Yet Colonel Harris had seen worse sights than this in Zululand and at
Omdurman. But on this stained stick, that discoloured silver band, he
felt it impossible to look.

"I have broken it to you, Will, as gently as I could," said Sir
Thomas, not quite as placidly as before. He too was not unmoved by
the distress of his old friend. "You see that I had no option, but to
tell you all. You must keep out of all this, old man, and above all
you must keep Louisa out of it. Take her abroad, Will, as soon as you
can."

"She won't go!" murmured the father, dully.

"Nonsense!"

"She won't go," he reiterated. "She has given her heart to Luke."

"She'll soon forget him."

"Not she!"

"And she'll be horrified--when she knows."

"She'll not believe it."

"If he is wise, he'll plead guilty--his solicitor will advise him to
do that. It is his one chance. . . ."

"His one chance?" queried the other vaguely.

"Of escaping the gallows. If he pleads guilty, many extenuating
circumstances will be admitted--his own spotless reputation--