d it,
enclosed it once more in a despatch-box belonging to Northmour, and
prepared a letter in Italian which he tied to the handle. It was signed
by both of us under oath, and declared that this was all the money which
had escaped the failure of the house of Huddlestone. This was, perhaps,
the maddest action ever perpetrated by two persons professing to be
sane. Had the despatch-box fallen into other hands than those for which
it was intended, we stood criminally convicted on our own written
testimony; but as I have said, we were neither of us in a condition to
judge soberly, and had a thirst for action that drove us to do
something, right or wrong, rather than endure the agony of waiting.
Moreover, as we were both convinced that the hollows of the links were
alive with hidden spies upon our movements, we hoped that our appearance
with the box might lead to a parley, and perhaps a compromise.

It was nearly three when we issued from the pavilion. The rain had taken
off; the sun shone quite cheerfully. I have never seen the gulls fly so
close about the house or approach so fearlessly to human beings. On the
very doorstep one flapped heavily past our heads, and uttered its wild
cry in my very ear.

"There is an omen for you," said Northmour, who, like all freethinkers,
was much under the influence of superstition. "They think we are already
dead."

I made some light rejoinder, but it was with half my heart; for the
circumstance had impressed me.

A yard or two before the gate, on a patch of smooth turf, we set down
the despatch-box; and Northmour waved a white handkerchief over his
head. Nothing replied. We raised our voices, and cried aloud in Italian
that we were there as ambassadors to arrange the quarrel; but the
stillness remained unbroken save by the sea-gulls and the surf. I had a
weight at my heart when we desisted; and I saw that even Northmour was
unusually pale. He looked over his shoulder nervously, as though he
feared that some one had crept between him and the pavilion door.

"By God," he said in a whisper, "this is too much for me!"

I replied in the same key: "Suppose there should be none, after all?"

"Look there," he returned, nodding with his head, as though he had been
afraid to point.

I glanced in the direction indicated; and there, from the northern
quarter of the Sea-Wood, beheld a thin column of smoke rising steadily
against the now cloudless sky.

"Northmour," I said (we still continue