I want to ask to begin with. Did anybody here actually see
Lord Bulmer this morning?"

Leonard Crane turned his pale face round the circle of faces till he
came to Juliet's; then he compressed his lips a little and said:

"Yes, I saw him."

"Was he alive and well?" asked Brain, quickly. "How was he
dressed?"

"He appeared exceedingly well," replied Crane, with a curious
intonation. "He was dressed as he was yesterday, in that purple
costume copied from the portrait of his ancestor in the sixteenth
century. He had his skates in his hand."

"And his sword at his side, I suppose," added the questioner. "Where
is your own sword, Mr. Crane?"

"I threw it away."

In the singular silence that ensued, the train of thought in many
minds became involuntarily a series of colored pictures.

They had grown used to their fanciful garments looking more gay and
gorgeous against the dark gray and streaky silver of the forest, so
that the moving figures glowed like stained-glass saints walking.
The effect had been more fitting because so many of them had idly
parodied pontifical or monastic dress. But the most arresting
attitude that remained in their memories had been anything but
merely monastic; that of the moment when the figure in bright green
and the other in vivid violet had for a moment made a silver cross
of their crossing swords. Even when it was a jest it had been
something of a drama; and it was a strange and sinister thought that
in the gray daybreak the same figures in the same posture might have
been repeated as a tragedy.

"Did you quarrel with him?" asked Brain, suddenly.

"Yes," replied the immovable man in green. "Or he quarreled with
me."

"Why did he quarrel with you?" asked the investigator; and Leonard
Crane made no reply.

Horne Fisher, curiously enough, had only given half his attention to
this crucial cross-examination. His heavy-lidded eyes had languidly
followed the figure of Prince Borodino, who at this stage had
strolled away toward the fringe of the wood; and, after a pause, as
of meditation, had disappeared into the darkness of the trees.

He was recalled from his irrelevance by the voice of Juliet Bray,
which rang out with an altogether new note of decision:

"If that is the difficulty, it had best be cleared up. I am engaged
to Mr. Crane, and when we told my brother he did not approve of it;
that is all."

Neither Brain nor Fisher exhibited any surprise, but the former
added, quie