e was no more than a shapeless mass obscuring the glow of the
fuel.

Morty shaded his eyes and peered more closely. He was not a sensitive
person, and he was obeying orders. But he was not quite comfortable.

"And that's your last word?" he said slowly. "Come, Colonel dear, ye'll
say something more to that."

"That's my last word to-day," Colonel John answered as slowly, and
without turning his head.

"Honour bright? Won't ye think better of it before I go?"

"I will not."

Morty paused, to tell the truth, in extreme exasperation. He had no
great liking for the part he was playing; but why couldn't the man be
reasonable? "You're sure of it, Colonel," he said.

Colonel John did not answer.

"And I'm to tell her so?" Morty concluded.

Colonel John rose sharply, as if at last the other tried him too far.
"Yes," he said, "tell her that! Or," lowering his voice and his hand,
"do not tell her, as you please. That is my last word, sir! Let me be."

But it was not his last word. For as Morty turned to go, and suffered
the light to fall again through the aperture, the Colonel heard him
speak--in a lower and a different tone. At the same moment, or his eyes
deceived him, a shadow that was not Morty O'Beirne's fell for one
second on the splayed wall inside the window. It was gone as soon as
seen; but Colonel John had seen it, and he sprang to the window.

"Flavia!" he cried. "Flavia!"

He paused to listen, his hand on the wall on either side of the
opening. His face, which had been pinched and haggard a moment before,
was now flushed by the sunset. Then "Flavia!" he repeated, keen appeal
in his voice. "Flavia!"

She did not answer. She was gone. And perhaps it was as well. He
listened for a long time, but in vain; and he told himself again that
it was as well. Why, after all, appeal to her? How, could it avail him?
What good could it do? Slowly he went back to his chair and sat down in
the old attitude over the embers. But his lip quivered.

CHAPTER XX

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

A little before sunset on that same day--almost precisely indeed at the
moment at which Flavia's shadow darkened the splayed flank of the
window in the Tower--two men stood beside the entrance at Morristown,
whence the one's whip had just chased the beggars. They were staring at
a third, who, seated nonchalantly upon the horse-block, slapped his
boot with his riding switch, and made as poor a show of hiding his
amusement as they of