k his head, but did not speak.

"He will kill him!" she said.

Asgill reflected in a heavy silence. "I will think what can be done,"
he muttered at last. "I will think! Do you go to bed!"

"To bed?" she cried.

"There is naught to be done to-night," he answered, in a low tone. "If
the troopers were not with him--then indeed; but that is useless.
And--his door is locked. Do you go to bed, and I will think what we can
do!"

"To save James?" She laid her hand on Asgill's arm, and he quivered.
"Ah, you will save him!" She had forgotten her brother's treatment of
her earlier in the day.

"If I can," he said slowly. His face was damp and very pale. "If I
can," he repeated. "But it will not be easy to save him honourably."

"What do you mean?" she whispered.

"He'll save himself, I fancy. But his honour----"

"Ah!" The word came from her in a cry of pain.

CHAPTER XXIII

BEHIND THE YEWS

Under the sky the pale softness of dawn had yielded place to the sun
in his strength--in more poetical words, Aurora had given way to
Phoebus--but within, the passages were still grey and chill, and
silent as though night's ghostly sentinels still walked them, when one
of the bedchamber doors opened and a face peeped out. The face was
Flavia's. The girl was too young, too full of life and vigour, to be
altered by a single sleepless night, but the cold reflection of the
whitewashed walls did that which watching had failed to do. It robbed
her eyes of their brightness, her face of its colour, her hair of its
lustre. She stood an instant, and gazed, frowning, at the doors that,
in a row and all alike, hid nevertheless one a hope, and another a
fear, and a third perhaps a tragedy. But drab, silent, closed, each
within a shadow of its own, they told nothing. Presently the girl
stepped forward--paused, scared by a board that creaked under her naked
foot--then went on again. She stood now at one of the doors, and
scratched on it with her nail.

No one answered the summons, and she pushed the door open and went in.
And, as she had feared, enlightened by Asgill's hint and by what she
had seen of her brother's conduct earlier in the day, she found. James
was awake--wide awake--and sitting up in his bed, his arms clasped
about his knees. His eyes met hers as she entered, and in his eyes, and
in his form, huddled together as in sheer physical pain, she read
beyond all doubt, beyond all mistake--fear. Why she had felt certain,
cou