ld
like to see a little more of you. Well, all in good time. I didn't send
for you to tell you that. Sit down, my girl; it is a matter of business."

Grace sat down, keenly on her guard, though she did not show it in the
least. Colonel Clifford resumed,

"You may be sure that nothing has been near my heart for some time but
your danger and my dear son's. Still, I owe something to other sufferers,
and the poor widows whose husbands have perished in that mine have cried
to me for vengeance on the person who bribed that Burnley. I am a
magistrate, too, and duty must never be neglected. I have got detectives
about, and I have offered five hundred guineas reward for the discovery
of the villain. One Jem Davies described him to me, and I put the
description on the placard and in the papers. But now I learn that
Davies's description is all second-hand. He had it from you. Now, I must
tell you that a description at second-hand always misses some part or
other. As a magistrate, I never encourage Jack to tell me what Jill says
when I can get hold of Jill. You are Jill, my dear, so now please verify
Jack's description or correct it. However, the best way will be to give
me your own description before I read you his."

"I will," said Grace, very much relieved. "Well, then, he was a man not
over forty, thin, and with bony fingers; an enormous gold ring on the
little finger of his right hand. He wore a suit of tweed, all one color,
rather tight, and a vulgar neck-handkerchief, almost crimson. He had a
face like a corpse, and very thin lips. But the most remarkable things
were his eyes and his eyebrows. His eyes were never still, and his brows
were very black, and not shaped like other people's; they were neither
straight, like Julia Clifford's, for instance, nor arched like Walter's;
that is to say, they were arched, but all on one side. Each brow began
quite high up on the temple, and then came down in a slanting drop to the
bridge of the nose, and lower than the bridge. There, if you will give me
a pencil I will draw you one of his eyebrows in a minute."

She drew the eyebrow with masterly ease and rapidity.

"Why, that is the eyebrow of Mephistopheles."

"And so it is," said Grace, naively. "No wonder it did not seem
human to me."

"I am sorry to say it is human. You can see it in every convict jail.
But," said he, "how came this villain to sit to you for his portrait?"

"He did not, sir. But when he was struggling with me