ring:

"It is time that we part. You must leave me now. Take this, and keep it
for ever. I shall be less unhappy in my terrible loneliness whilst it
lasts if I know that this my gift, which for good or ill is a part of me
as you know me, is close to you. It may be, my very dear, that some day
you may be glad and even proud of this hour, as I am." She kissed me as
I took it.

"For life or death, I care not which, so long as I am with you!" I said,
as I moved off. Descending the Jacob's ladder, I made my way down the
rock-hewn passage.

The last thing I saw was the beautiful face of my Lady of the Shroud as
she leaned over the edge of the opening. Her eyes were like glowing
stars as her looks followed me. That look shall never fade from my
memory.

After a few agitating moments of thought I half mechanically took my way
down to the garden. Opening the grille, I entered my lonely room, which
looked all the more lonely for the memory of the rapturous moments under
the Flagstaff. I went to bed as one in a dream. There I lay till
sunrise--awake and thinking.

BOOK V: A RITUAL AT MIDNIGHT

RUPERT'S JOURNAL--_Continued_.

_June_ 20, 1907.

The time has gone as quickly as work can effect since I saw my Lady. As
I told the mountaineers, Rooke, whom I had sent on the service, had made
a contract for fifty thousand Ingis-Malbron rifles, and as many tons of
ammunition as the French experts calculated to be a full supply for a
year of warfare. I heard from him by our secret telegraph code that the
order had been completed, and that the goods were already on the way.
The morning after the meeting at the Flagstaff I had word that at night
the vessel--one chartered by Rooke for the purpose--would arrive at
Vissarion during the night. We were all expectation. I had always now
in the Castle a signalling party, the signals being renewed as fast as
the men were sufficiently expert to proceed with their practice alone or
in groups. We hoped that every fighting-man in the country would in time
become an expert signaller. Beyond these, again, we have always a few
priests. The Church of the country is a militant Church; its priests are
soldiers, its Bishops commanders. But they all serve wherever the battle
most needs them. Naturally they, as men of brains, are quicker at
learning than the average mountaineers; with the result that they learnt
the