THE DEVIL'S DIE. A NOVEL. By grant ALLEN, Author of " Babylon,*' " The Duchess of Fowvsland,*' £ic. New York: . THE F. M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY, Nos. 72-76 Walker Street. rr -) o c 290012 FHE DEVIL'S DIE. OHAFTEE I. ** Now then, Sam,** the head porter muttered sulkily in an audvrtone to his mate ; "lend a hand here, will you, lazy, to get out the black gentleman's luggage." Dr. Mohammad Ali stood watching the poridrs very attentively aa they disembarked the bags and boxes (with the regulation show of un- necessary vehemence) from the open van at Polperran Station on the tag-end of the Great Western Railway. Oarlyle was right : immense and unsuspected depths of importance lurk unseen in mere clothing. At Saharanpur, in the North- West Pro- vinces, where Mohammad Ali had been bom and bred, and where his respected father still lived upon his means as a native money-lender, the young doctor would have passed in the crowd as a very decent Mohammedan gentleman of the stereotyped pattern. A turban aii4| a cummerbund make all the difference. But at Polperran Station, in ifte county of Cornwall, a round felt hat of the newest model, a weU-made otit-away tourist suit of grey homespun, a tie and collar of Bond Street perfection, and a white rosebud daintily stuck, with a sprig of maiden- hair, in his topmost buttonhole, had almost transformed the handsoma young Mussulman into a genuine free-bom, fii'st-elass passengvr. A> he stood there, holding out a tiny scrap of oJHicial paper in his small and neatly gloved right hand, his own mother, good lady, mewed up in her zenana at Saharanpur, would hardly have recognized her metamor- phosed son for a true and faithful follower of the Prophet of Islam. Dr. Mohammad Ali was decidedly both good-looking and gentlemanly. Dark, of course ; you expect a man whose parents live in the native town at Saharanpur to have a somewhat sombre oast of complexion ; but strikingly handsome and pleasing, for all that, with his keen and piercing East Indian eyes, his delicately-moulded small features, his charming smile of perfect good humour, and his two even rows of dainty and faultess pearl-white teeth. Even the port.ers eyed him respectfully ; they saw at a glance with professional instinct that be was black, but comely — one of the* right sort in fact ; good for half-a-crown down any day, if he was good fur a penny. *' Genelman's got a dog-ticket, Sam," the head porter muttered, with a nodse to his underling. **Irs EMt a dog, iny friend," Dr. Mohammad Ali answered, amiling, 4 TBI DITIX.'! Dirt In English * great deal better than the porter's own. It's that box ever yonder — the one with the pierced holes and the stiok-out handles to it Take it gently by the handles only, and don't put your fingers too near the holes on any account. There's a snake inside it ; in fact, a rattlesnake, one of the very deadliest creatures known to science." The young man spoke in a soft, low, musical voice, and didn't seem to be at all aware that he was communicating a fact in the least out of the common ; but the efTect of his speech upon the two burly Cornish porters was instantaneous and magical. They had been preparing to swing out the box, live stock and all, with tho usual generous and effusive recklessness of the suborned luggage-smasher ; but at the sound of that talismanio name, *' rattlesnake, " they laid down the handles gingerly with profound firmness, and respectfully, but very distinctly declined to proceed further with the act of clearing the entire compart- ment. "The company are not and don't undertake to be common carriers of rattlesnakes, sir," the head porter observed abstractedly; ** and, what's more, at my time of life, it ain't to be expected as I'm going to take to 'em." At that very moment the sudden apparition of a rapidly vibrating forked tongue, protruded like lightning through one of the drilled holes in the box, and showing an ominoas vista behind of two grooved fangs, surmounted by a pair of watchful beady-black eyes in the dim back- ground, gave added point and fresh emphasis to the head porter's de- cided protest. Dr. Mohammad Ali observed the apparition of the tongue and fangs irith evident relish. *'Ha! that's right, x)ld girl," he said, tapping the covdr gently with his gloved finger, ** so you're lively, are you ? lively, lively ! None the worse for your long journey down from Paddington, eh, my beauty ? That's a good girl ! Softly, softly 1 Put back your head now, and go to sleep again. You shall rest in peace to- night in your furnished apartments, your own hired house, my lady. Do you happen to know where a gentleman by the name of Dr. Chichele lodges ? Ah, there you are at last, my dear fellow 1 Delighted to see you. I've brought down the Begum as you see, for your behoof and mstruction ; but your porters here in this remote district appear to harbour an incomprehensible prejudice against venomous reptiles. They seem to be afraid the Begum '11 bite them. Lend me a hand with her highness, will you, Harry, and mind she doesn't get a chance with her fangs at you for all the universe 1 " The young Englishman in boating flannels who had just come up, took one of the handles firmly in his grasp, while Mohammad himself held the other daintily in his gloved fingers. Between them they lifted the box with gentle caution out of the luggage van, and laid it down on tho platform safely in front of them. ** Now, then I " shouted the station-master, with some asperity ; *• look alive, there, will you I Any more for the Penzance train ? Got that vermin safe out of the van 7 All right I Go ahead, then, Bill 1 " And he sounded his whistle. " And you, sir," turning to the smilinf Ewt Indian, ** you can't take that beast back to London sgain, yov THl dstil'i Dn. ^ know. The Great Western Railway Company hereby give notice that they are not and will not be *' '*I know, I know," Mohammad Ali answered, with a good-natured smile and wave of his hand. ** But the Begum doesn't propose going back to town at all, Mr. Station-master. It's her highness's intention, as at present advised, to spend the short remainder of her days in observing nature here at Polperran. She's in splendid poison, Harry ; in magnificent poison. I never saw a rattlesnake in finer fig anywhere in India. Rich and rare were the germs she wore — every germ of them all a deadly virus. If she was to bite you this moment — hi presto, be- fore you could say the usual ' Jack Robinson ' it'd be all up with you." And he seated himself carelessly sideways upon the box, drew ofiF his glove, and tapped at one of the round holes with his thumb and fore- finger, as if on purpose to excite and stimulate the half-dormant creature coiled up inside. The Begum answered by darting her tongue out viciously as he with- drew his finger, and endeavouring to bury her fangs deep in the naked flesh of her ardent admirer. "Naughty girl, naughty girl, be quiet now, will you ?" the youv r Mussulman murmured playfully, in the voice in which one usually addresses a toy terrier. " Would she bite her master, then, would she ; would she ? She was a naughty, ungrateful, wicked, bad serpent, and she deserved to be taken straight home, and well whipped, and sent to bed supperless. How shall we get her up to your lodging, Harry ? " "There's a sort of cab or omnibus somewhere in the place," the Englishman answered, laughing; "but the 'busman will certjiinly decline to carry her, so we'd , better borrow a truck and wheel it up with her. But you can't go along through the streets of Polpen an wheeling a truck in that hat, and coat, and buttonhole, Ali. You lo< >k for all the world, with your fine clothes, as if you were going to a fete era flower show." Ali lighted a cigarette carelessly, " When 1 come into a fresh world," he said, pufBng it out in white clouds, " I dress myself in my best accord- ingly. I have come to explore the world of Cornwall. There will be houris in Polperran. Even the despised black man likea to do himsulf justice in the presence of houria. Am I not a man and a brother ? " And he- looked up into his English companion's fair fa',?e with a comical exprts sion of appealing humanity which made Harry Chichele lau;{h heartily. " Well," the Englishman said, "at any rate, Ali, we'd better taUo the beast up— I beg your pardon, I mean the Begum. By the way, why do you call her such an odd name ? She's handsome enough and vicious enough for it in all conscience, anyhow." ^ Ali helped him lift the box tenderly on to the trolly which the porter lent him. " She is," he said, removing his cigarette from his mouth for a moment, " wicked enough, and vicious enough, no doubt, or at least nearly. For she couldn't quite come up in wickedness and cruelty |o th« SupoJadlle old la4y &fter whom I've ventured to oaU her*" 6 tarn vMfu/M DIB. "And who was that?" Harry Ohichele asked carelessly, as they wheeled the truck between them away from the station. " Oh, it's only a strange weird story of our own parts, but you'd better hear it, both because you're going in future to be the Begum's master, and because— well, because the Begum's story is somehow con- nected with certain English families of some social and douiestio importance. I called her after Begum Johanna of Deoband." *' And who was Begum Johanna? " Harry Chichele asked, with that faint show of interest which we all feebly pretend to feel in things Indian before the faces of those to whom they are living realities. " I seem to remember the name, I fancy. My father often spoke of her, I think. Perhaps he had something to do with her in India." Mohammad Ali coughed. It was a dry cough with a peculiarly arid and Arab significance about it. "He had," he answered. *' Your grandfather knew her. She was the wife of a French soldier of fortune in the wild freebooting days in the Punjaub. And it's about her they tell that terrible story of the buried slave-girl. Of course you know the story of the slave-girl I " *• We English are dreadfully ignorant of Indian affairs," Harry Chi- chele replied with obliquely apologetic confession of ignorance, *' Well, this is the story, and you ought to know it, Harry. It — it has some interest for some of the great Anglo-Indian families. Begum Johanna had once a beautiful slave girl whom she suspected of having intrigued with her husband, the Frenchman. Whether she had intri- gued with him, or whether she hadn't I can't tell you ; but at any rate sh« was a very lovely girl from Cashmere, and the Frenchman admired her, and that alone was quite enough to rouse Begum JohanQa's dead- liest jealousy. So one night, when she imagined her husband had been talking with the girl, she got her bricklayers suddenly to excavate a great hole under her own bedchamber, and built a small brick vault, and put a trap door to it leading from her bedroom. Then she had the girl brought before her and flogged till she was almost insensible ; and after that, a couple of servants lowered the poor creature down into the vault, with a jar of water but no food, and closed the trap door down tight, and put Begum Johanna's bed on the top of it. For nine days and nine nights that unhappy slave lay there, starving and dying slowly in the vault ; and for nine days and nine nights Begum Johanna lay on her couch listening to the terrified creature's frantic shrieks, and gloating over her agony as they subsided at last till she died by inches. Harry, it's a terrible thing even to feel one belongs to a race in which such deviltry as that was ever possible." He said it earnestly and very sadly, es if the feeling of his kinship with that awful woman oppressed and weighed down his inmost spirit. Harry Chichele instinctively felt the genuineness of his black friend's expression, and answered hurriedly, as if to put him more at his ease, *• Well, you know, after all, we ourselves, Ali, here in Europe, aren't ■o very much better either. It's not so very long ago, when one comes to think of it, that we, too, burnt and tortured our witches and our oiiminala ; and I can remou^ber myself the time when hov^ Ton mm ditil's dii. 7 Noddy, and others of his caste, made parties of pleasure and hired rooms at vast expense to go and see a man die in his boots." " Ah, yes," the Indian answered, with a faint toss of his head and a curl of his lip, ** that's true enough, of course, my dear fellow ; we're both in pretty much the same box. There's a great deal of human nature in all of us. The ape and tiger are only half bred out of us anywhere as yet. But the awful fact remains none the less awful because we all of us share in it alike. Rather it is only all the more awful, if it comes to that. The wider the condemnation, the worse for humanity. 1 regret that my ancestors only a generation or two back, were hideous fiends in human form, and you console me by assuring me, with your graceful English condescension, that about the same time your own progenitors, too, were devils incarnate. A poor sort of topsy-turvy, ' You're another I ' ' Father Confessor, I am dreadfully wicked.' * Yes, dear son, but all the rest of us are really every bit as bad as you are.' There, there, old girl ; keep quiet, keep quiet. Your Highness's troubles will soon be over. You'll find yourself now after ten minutes at Ohichele's room in a congenial atmosphere of all the dis- eases and all the poisons." ** But, AH, you don't mean to say you're descended yourself from Begum Johanna ? " The black doctor gave a sudden start of unfeigned horror. *' Me ?" he cried. *'Me, did you say, Chichele? Heaven forbid it. No, not descended from her 1 Thank God, not a drop of that terrible woman's cursed blood ^ows in a single vein of mine, Harry. You forget her name — she was a Christian — Johanna. A converted Hindoo, I mean, not a Mohammedan. All my people are Moslems of the purest type, descendants of the Arab missionaries to India. But the Hindoos, who believe in transmigration, you know, have a strange story that the Begum's soul took up its abode after death in the body of a rattlesnake. A very appropriate dwelling-place, indeed 1 She was that, and worse than it. So that's why I call our lady here the Begum. I sometimes fancy vaguely to myself — you know we Indians are an imaginative race — that the Hindoo theories are right- after all, and that Begum Johan- na's bloodthirsty soul lives to this day in my treacherous snake here. Look at her eyes I How deadly ! how jealous 1 Look at her fangs I How sleek and cruel. Quiet, your highness ; quiet, quiet ; you're nearly home now." They had reached the middle of the one long grey street of Polperran, and, as Ali spoke, a pony-carriage drove lightly past them, with a dark Cornish girl holding the reins. She smiled in much amusement at the incident of the truck, and bowed a hasty bow, as she passed, to Harry Chichele. ** Pretty girl, isn't she ? " Harry Chichele said, raising his sailor's cap with a graceful movement. "That's Miss Tregel las, the rector's daughter. She's the belle of Polperran. Renders existence here endurable for the present. Otherwise, I'm sure I don't know how I ■hould ever have got through the summer without you, Ali." **Sh«'f more than pretty," Mohammad Ali answered, bia voice dxo^ § THB devil's DIl. ping to a chivalrous undertone. *' She has a sweet face ; good as well *8 beautiful. Your English women are goddesses, Harry. Why was I l>orn in India, I wonder? Just fancy me marrying an Indian woman -a doll of a creature taken straight from the zenana to Middlesex Hospital 1 The idea's grotesque. I could never dream of it. An I inglishworaan's the only woman fit for me. And yet no Engliswoman v^uuld ever for a moment think of taking me. Strange that a mere iii.itinction of cuticle should so completely cut a man off from all his natural peers and helpmates 1 Brain and soul and spirit may be civi- I /.ed and European as you please ; but none of them will weigh one !.iain in the scales against a wrong sort of epidermis 1 I wonder, now, why the epidermis should be considered, socially speaking, such a very important part of human anatomy 1 " Harry Ghicheie laughed an unconcerned laugh. **My dear fellow," he said, in a good-humoured tone, '* your mistake lay in ever divorcing yourself from your natural surroundings. You ought to have stopped ia India, you know, and then you'd have been satisfied, like all your ancestors, with the good women of your own country. Now you've come to England, of course you won't put up with the type of beauty usually admired by the faithful of Islam." *' Never 1 " Mohammad Ali cried with a shudder. ** Heaven forbid so great a degradation 1 But, for all that, I'm glad I came to England. To stop in India is to starve one's own moral and mental nature. To ( ome here is growth, development, emancipation, freedom I " And he stroked his moustache meditatively with his dusky hand, as he stooped town once more to inspect in her dose cage the now quiet and slum- boring Begum. / CHAPTER n. The next morning was a glorious English August day, calm and oleur, \vith bright blue sky and glassy sea ; and Harry Chichele took Moham- mad Ali out for a walk along the beautiful weather-worn clifis of 1 '• )lperran. The two young men had been students together at the Middlesex Hospital, where Harry Chichele was employed as junior house physi- (-! -n. Some months had passed, however, since they had last met, and M hammad Ali, at the end of his medical course in London, had gone Oil bo spend the winter in India, on a visit to his parents, and had only jimt returned to England, bringing with him an appropriate present f'»r his old fellow-student, in the shape of the Begum. For Harry Chichele was allowed to be the greatest rising authority in England on germs and poisons, and he was just then engaged on a series of minute researches into the bite of a common English viper as compared with that of various other venomous snakes and poisonous reptiles. It was the vipers, in fact, that had brought him for his summer holiday ditil'i dii. 9 Into Oornwall ; for the wild heather-covered moorB that surrounded Polperran on every side supply the very spots where the sun-loving adders delight to bask, and the lizards to bathe themselves in the broad sunshine on the sand banks and open patches. ** The sea looks magnificent this morning," Harry Chichele said, as they reached the summit of a jagged and pinnacled granite crag, that jutted out boldly into the deep emerald-green bay below. *' VVhat a lovely purple on the distant horizon, and what a perfect calm over the whole Channel. I love to see it, vast and illimitable and silent like that 1 Some people say the sea is always so changeable. For my part. Ali, it's rather the grand monotony and infinity of the ocean that makes it most sublime and beautiful to me." *' Ugh, don't speak of it, my dear boy," Mohammad Ali cried with a sadden shudder. *' If you had been tossed about helpless upon the bosom of Biscay, as I've been for the last tre and aft, with a close scrutiny. " She's in distress," he said at last, decisively. " Not a doubt in the world about that. The man's holding the tiller in one hand, and the sheet in the other. There's a red handkerchief tied to the sheet, as you say, and he gives it a shake every now and again on purpose to be noticed. He's trying to signal us — I'm sure of that. Ha, now he's waving a handkerchief in his hand. He. sees us, he sees us ! He's making signs to us." '* Bettor go back to Polperran at once," Mohammad Ali suggested, hastily, '* and put out a boat to see what's the matter." They walked back at their best speed to the little cove — ^a bay of white sand, hemmed in on every aide by granite cliflfs — and hired a row- boat from a man on the beach. Two stalwart fishermen manned thn boat for them, and took the oars. The men rowed hard, and theywcht sailed sluggishly on before the faint and almost imperceptible breeze until they had got nearly within hailing distance. Mohammad Ali held the field-grass in his hand. " Tliere's only one man, sure enough," he said in a grave voice, eyeing him closely, " and even he sooms scarcely fit to work a vessel. He's ghastly pale, and very feeble-looking. He totters about when he moves on the deck. It's about the most mysterious ship I ever saw. Never a sign of lif« about her. She looks, somehow, like a plague-stricken city." " Perhaps," Harry said, " the owner's trying to navigate her alone. You know people will go in for these foolhardy adventures. " 'They dj ew closer and saw the yacht, with all her sails, save that on« solitary triangular piece of canvas, furled and reefed on tlie yards in due order — a bare hull, drifting slowly, slowly, slowly on, before that breathless and motionless air of August. Nothing but the current was bearing her along. Not a sound or a movement came from the yacht. The water hardly sheered off from her bows as she glided imperceptibly on. She seemed to slacken even as they approached, and to lie idle at last in perfect inaction upon the calm surface of that unruflBed sea. "I can make out her name," Mohammad Aii mused aloud. **Th« Seamew, of London. A pretty little craft, but deadly still. Ther« must be some curious mystery about her." As he spoke, Mohammad Ali laid down the field-glass with a cry of surprise. '* The man's ill," he cried ; deadly ill. He looks almost as if he were dying. He cuu hardly hold himself up on tha daok. Pull THB DEVlL'a DIIL 11 Mongside, quiok, will you ? There, that'll do. SeametOy ahoy t ahoy I ikhoy, there I " The one occupant of the deserted yacht flung up his hands with a wild shout, and let go at once both sheet and tiller. ** Ahoy I ahoy 1 ahoy 1 " he answered, in a hollow voice, with convulsive eagerness. ** What's up ? " Mohammad AH shouted, between his hands. " Hold oflf," the stranger hailed back, in a terrible tone of tremulous warning, his hands held open deprecatingly before him. "Cholera 1 cholera 1" At the sound of that awful and dreaded word, the two fishermen dropped their oars at once, as if by magic, and let the boat float idly of herself upon the glassy water. *' The Lord preserve us 1 " one of them murmured, with sudden horror. ** Stop where you are I Not another stroke 1 We can't go near her 1 Wo mustn't go near her 1 " "Go on !" Mohammad Ali cried, in a tone of command. "The man's dying. We can't atop here. If you don't go on, you'll b« too late to save him." " Not another stroke," the first fisherman answered, doggedly. " You're a coward," the Indian cried, seizing the oar, with a sudden bunt of fiery indignation, and showing his pearl-white teeth like a dog in the heat of his anger. " Come along, Harry. Take the oars from them, quick, will you. We must pull alongside and help this poor fellow. Coward, I say 1 Cowards, both of you 1 I never knew before that seafaring men couPi be so cowardly. " "I'm not afraid of the worst storm that ever blew out of God's heaven," the fisherman answered, holding tight to his oar and disputing its possession ; " but hang me if I'm ever going for you or for no maA to bring the cholera home to Polperran." Mohammad Ali glanced at him hard with unconcealed scorn. "My friend," he said, "we two are doctors. We're no more afraid of the cholera, we two, than you're afraid of a bit of a lighr. sou'-wester. la this the bravery you Englishmen boast of 1 What would you do if we doctors were to shirk danger as you do ? It's our w<»rk and our duty to face the cholera, and got the better of it, as it's your work and your duty to faco and outlive the very fiercest hurricane that ever rode on the angry Atlantic. Pull us alongside, I tell you, at once, or let us pull ourselves if you're afraid of it. I'm not going to run away from danger now like a cowardly deserter." "You may do as you like with the cholera yourself," the fisherman answered, still grasping the oar. " Of course, it's your business. But me and my mate '11 have nothing to say to it, so that's flat, and you may as well be satisfied." He spoke firmly, with the dogged obstinacy of the Cornish race showing strong in his voice and manner, and Mohammad Ali felt at once it was no use parleying further with him. Quick as lightning the sinuous young Indian stood up in the stern and shouted once more to the death-like figure in the Seamew opposite. ** How many on board 1 " he cried, with a loud cry. /IS THB devil's DTE "Only one more," the stranger answered with a terrible effort. "And he's dying." " Where ?^' "On deck here." "And the rest?" ' '* " All dead. Owner and eight hands of them. Cholera broke out on board the third day out from Santander. I've navigated the yacht myself alone since yesterday morning. Send out a doctor as quick as you can to save the boy here." / Mohammad All answered nothing. He did not hesitate for a singl* son md. Swift as thought, he pulled oflF his coat, flung it into the stern, JMiiped on to the thwart, raised his hands together high above his li. ad, and plunged forthwith, like a practised diver as he was, into the t.ilm and placid water below. A few dozen strokes brought him fairly silongside. for he breasted the sea with powerful arms, and swam ahead \\ ith all the fierce and eager energy of a sudden resolution. The man on the yacht crawled feebly to the ship's side, fastened a rope with t lembling fingers to a brass peg, and threw it over towards the Indian wa, yards aud yardjl 1*7 ** A philosophy that comes in the end, Ali, merely to saying things are, on the whole, rather bad and utterly inscrutable." *' Exactly, exactly, my dear fellow. I don't deny it, Nobody re- cognizes it more than I do. Pessimism, pessimism, pur hopeless pessimism — pessimism masquerading as a belief in the inscrutability of the infinite, and as perfect resignation to its incomprehensible wUl — pessimism veiled under a thin theistic disguise by attributing everything directly to Allah, who, of course, is always inscrutable. And yet it suits us, you know ; it suits our idiosyncrasy. It's hereditary, I sup- pose ; everything's hereditary. We are all just what our fathers made us. Take me over to London, and cram me, and educate me, and fill me full with assorted facts, and arts, and sciences, till I am learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, not to mention the Greeks, Romans, Qermans, French, English, and other miscellaneous Europeans generally — stuff me with Mill and Spencer, and Comte and Hartmann, and Her- mann's physiology : and yet in the end what am I still 1 Why, Mo- hammad Ali, an Arab of the Arabs. And what is still the burden of my song ? Why, Allah is great ! Kismet 1 Bismillah ! " He spoke sadly and half scornfully of himself, yet with a certain evident undercurrent of pride in his time-honoured old Arabian ancestry. What he said, however, was quite true, and Ivan Royle, after a week's acquaintance, at once recognized its truth and justice. With all his acuteness, and gentleness, and ability, Mohammad Ali, after swallowing and digesting all the latest ideas of all the western sciences and philosophies, remained still, as he said, in his heart of hearts, an Arab of the Arabs — pessimistic, fatalist, urbane, chivalrous, acquiescent, humane, but utterly and wholly oriental in sentiment. Ivan Royle — now nearly himself again — looked at the pensive Indiau face, half in admiration and half in pity, a few seconds. The restless, energetic Anglo-Saxon mind, with its eager, forward Aryan impulse, can hardly fathom the calm, restful, uncomplaining content of the oriental spirit. " You're quite right, Ali," he murmured at last ; ** we're all of us at bottom what our fathers made us. The new philosophy of Darwin and Haeckel brings us back pretty much to the old philosophy of the Hebrew preachers. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the child- ren indeed, unto the third and fourth generation. Determinism, after all, is only fatalism the other way on. " "The fathers have oaten sour grapes," Mohammad Ali repeated solemnly, "and the children's teeth are set on edge. I know a terrible case of that myself. Begum Johanna of Deoband " — and then with a start he checked himself suddenly. Evidently Begum Johanna was for some reason or other running in his head, and he sadly wanted to disburden himself, but refrained. ** Royle," he went on, in an altered tone, ''it's always so, you know, with us Easterns. Time makes no difference to our innate philosophy. Read in your own Bibles your Book of Job i what is it but the very thought and creed and poetry of M THB DITIL'B DIS. modem Islam t Kismet, kismet. Allah is great : the world is very full of evil, but we cannot fathom it, we cannot help it I There is nothing new under the sun. All these problems existed already, and were answered in just the same fatalist fashion, three thousand years ago, in the tents of the sheikhs and ameers of Edom, as they are to-day ftt Mecca or at Agra. Men saw that all things were very evil, and they •aid in reply, ' Allah is great ; let Him alone, it is His doing : we can- not understand Him.' As your own Tennyson despondently puts it — why, he might almost have been a Moslem himself — ' I have not made the world, and he that made it shall guide.' Isn't that just pure ori- entalism — the philosophy of kismet ? And yet it's strange what we are to be in life should depend so much, not upon ourselves, but upon the mere accident of our great-great-grandfathers ! " "In fact," Ivan Royle said, somewhat more lightly, "the most important question after all in a man's life is just the choice he makeb beforehand of a proper and suitable father and mother." " True," the Indian replied, gi-avely smiling. "I wonder what Miss Tregellas's mother could have been like now ? An angel, I should think, to judge by her daughter. But there, I forget myself. I'm talking now like a born Englishman, without remembering the great gulf that yawns for ever and ever between us." And he relapsed at onoe, with a deep sigh, into his accustomed oriental gravity of silence. CHAPTER VI. It was once more a glorious August day, and the joy of the summer pulsed full and free in Harry Chichele's bounding veins. He sat out in a garden chair under the big lime tree on the rectory lawn, reading a novel, and hearing the hum of the myriad bees, busily buzzing among the heavy-scented flowers. Ivan Royle, now thoroughly convalescent, sat in another chair beside him, and sketched at his leisure a dainty little water-colour of the rectory porch, with its clambering growth of clematis and jasmiiie. They had all taken up their abode there for the present, so as to isolate the case till the fear of infection was well over " What are you reading 1 " Ivan asked at last, after a long pause, putting his head warily on one side, and surveying his half-finished sketch with critical approbation. " Oh, merely a novel, * Percival's Tryst.' I suppose you've seen it. It's wonderfully clever — so weird and poetical. " " * Percival's Tryst 1 ' " Ivan answered with a start. " Why, that's by Seeta Mayne I Seeta Mayne's a cousin of my own, you know. She'i a sister of Mayne, who owned the Seamew^ and aunt of my poor boy Theo, whom you buried down yonder." Harry looked up at him with an appreciative glance. " It must be a great j>rivilege/' he said, seriously, " to know i^ wumau like Se#ta THE DEYIL'b DII. S9 Mayne. She's marvellously able. I can't say how much I admire her work. I should like to meet her. Is she personally agreeable ? Is she clever in talk 1 Is she handsome or ugly ? " " Oh, well, she's handsome, decidedly handsome, in a grand, awful, commanding sort of way," the young artist answered, still touching up his picture. " And she's clever, too. Yes, certainly clever. And she's agreeable as well, decidedly agreeable — whenever she chooses. But she can't hold a candle, you know, in any way to our Miss Tregellas." He said it proudly, with a certain manifest air of proprietorship in Olwen, and Harry Chichele, who had been the first comer of the three to Polperran, resented it accordingly. He looked up with a sudden flash from his book. The two men's eyes met for a second, and each read the other's secret dimly. But men are reticent to one another on such points. Neither spoke. Each looked down again with furtive haste, and continued his own avocation in silence. A minute later, Olwen Tregellas tripped lightly across the close- mown lawn, in a simple morning dress and hat, and moved gracefully towards her two visitors. Ivan glanced at her with artistic approbation — her every movement was so bright and fairy-like — and made a mental note of her tripping step for future use in an imagined picture. She came np and glanced over his shoulder at the sketch. **■ Oh 1 how lovely," she cried with unfeigned admiration. " What a delicate touch you've got, Mr. Royle ; and how exquisitely you've caught the spirit of the long, lithe curves in the jasmine I " ** I'm glad you like it," Ivan cried, delighted. *' I wanted you to like it. It is yours. I'm pleased it meets its owner's approbation." *' Mine I The sketch ! Oh, how awfullly kind of you I I never had a real picture of my own in my life before. I shall prize it so much. It's really too good of you. " She stood long praising it and admiring it, and Harry Chichele felt half annoyed at the fervour of the thanks she gave to Ivan. Who was Ivan that he should thus come in, at the eleventh hour, as it were, interloping ? He, Harry, and he alone, had discovered Olwen. What biisiness had any other fellow thus to go meddling, without his leave, with his original discovery 1 By-and-by Olwen herself turned and spoke to him. " I came out, Dr. Chichele," she said, in her timid little way, " to see if you would care to take a stroll on the cliflfs with me. Papa thinks we might venture awav from the grounds now, as the danger is practically all over, and I thought you'd like a blow on the moorland." Harry's face flushed up with pleasure, and he felt at once that he had more than distanced that interloping Ivan. '' It would be too delight- ful," he cried, enchanted. ** How kind of you to ask me. I wanted a walk, and with such companionship " Olwen blushed. Harry laid down his book with his sentence unflnished, and they waved a friendly farewell to Ivan, who was still far too weak to dream of walking. ** Royle tells nie he's a cousin of Seeta Mayne's," Harry began, as they tunud together out of the garden ^fAtfs ** I've just been reading ' I'lircival s Tryst, you know. It's f 80 THB DXTIL'a DIB. wonderful book. And it seems that Seeta Mayne's a c(\ isin of Royle'i, and a sister of the p©or fellow who owned the Seamew.* *' How nice it must be to know people like that," Olwe cried simply. " And how nice to be like Seeta Mayne herself, and fie \ble to write such wonderful novels. Mr. Royle must think very little, ^f us quiet Cornish folk if he's accustomed to mixing with such great, cl(\ er, accom- plished London people." Harry glanced at her askance with an almost shy and frighte ed look. It was a summer day, and she was very beautiful. '* One star differeth from another in glory," he ansiwered simply. "I dare say Seeta Mayne's awfully clever, and all that sort of thing ; but she can hav no good ground, whatever she may be, to think little in any way of * quv^t Cornish people.' " Olwen toyed with her light parasol. *' You know I don't care for Seeta Mayne," she went on quickly, as if to glide fast over the thin ice. " She's rather too much up in the clouds for me. She never comes down from her high horse. She lives in a world too grand, and gran- diose, and noble, and ethereal for ordinary humanity." "For my part, I admire her work very much," Harry answered carelessly, plucking a wayside flower and pulling it idly to pieces as he went. '* But 1 can easily understand that ymt, don't care for her. Miss Tregellas. You two move upon such different planes. Her mind deals wholly with an ideal world, which her fancy peoples with strange and bright and glorious creations. Your footsteps rather tread this solid earth of ours, which you strive to make better and happier and purer for every one of us. Between two such natures there is a certain great gulf fixed. Yet I believe I, from my intermediate masculine stand- point, can. admire and appreciate and understand both natures equally." " Hers is the highest, though, of course," Olwen murmured, half self-consciously. " When we are young, we always love to hear ourselves talked about." *' I'm not so sure of that, either," Harry answered, in dubious tones. " You remember Wordsworth's ' Phantom of Delight ' ? I'm not cer- tain in my own mind that, in the end, the ' creature not too bright and good for human natures daily food ', doesn't after all deserve best of humanity. It is such as those that seem always brightest to me ' with something of the angel-light,' as Wordsworth puts it." They wore treading dangerously near the edge of a precipice now. When a young man and a young woman begin to quote poetry together, the end is usually not far ofl". But they fluttered still, like a pair of eddying moths, about the edge of the candle, flitting forever round and round it, and trying hard, as young people will do, to go as near the flame as possible without actually singeing their wings in it. Soon they turned out upon the open moorland. " How glorious the views are to-day 1 " Harry cried, with delight, sniflBng in the breath of the golden gorse and the fainter perfume of the large Cornish heather. '* A morning like this makes one feel the meaning of the joy of living! How the Moorland smiles at us from a thousand faces 1 llow delight- ^ THx devil's dis. 31 ful it is to come among so many old friends once more t To my mind, there's no heath on earth one half so lovely as the Cornish heather." " It only grows for a few miles just about here, you know," 01 wen cried, delighted at the London doctor's praise of their local product. *' Yes ; Polperran has more than one rare flower of its own," Harry answered significantly, with a side glance at Olwen. Then he feared he had gone too far. He stooped and picked a little pinky-white bell, the autumnal scilla, to divert the thread of talk. " What a sweet little blossom, this one," he cried, admiring it ; "in shape, as graceful as an Etruscan vase ; in colour, as beautiful as— as an English maiden. I'm sure I can say nothing prettier than that. " Olwen pushed the brushes aside with her parasol timidly. " Indeed," she said, "in weather like this the world is very, very beautiful." Harry smiled. " It needs no Columbus, Miss Tregellas." he mut- tered, half in irony, to "discover that continent. On such a summer day, I come out of town and go into the world, a regular optimist, to find it everywhere rich and glorious with varied beauty. The play »9ems to be in full swing, and we have front seats everywhere reserved £or us. I love to watch it all as it works itself out — the rabbits twinkling oflF in haste to their burrows ; the larks tossing up their full hearts to the sky ; the very worms, and bees, and beetles all quick and instinct with the joy of living. The world wags on in its own quaint way, eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage, by every lane, and moor, and hedgerow ; and I love to see it, and to feel myself one with it." And then, with the young blood still beating fuller and hotter than ever in his veins, he flew off half unconsciously into that vague, high-flown, poetical talk that first love kindles of itself ki every one of us. The moorland was lovelier than its wont that morning, and Harry knew what it was that made it so. He talked on, half in rapsody and half in seriousness, of everything beautiful, or grand, or exquisite that met their eyes in that enchanted fairyland. He talked of the birds, and the beasts, and the flowers ; he talked of the ships, and the bay, and the ocean ; but most of all he talked, as young people always do talk in such special circumstances, of their own tvK> selves, circling round and round that delicious central question for ever, yet never quite arriving at it. " How beautifully you put things. Dr. Chichele," Olwen cried at laat, admiring him. " Nobody else ever talks as you do." Harry smiled. Her incense was grateful to him, He recognized that he was talking better than himself. He didn't know, however, that it wasn't he who was putting things so beautifully that cloudless morning ; but the hot young blood and the summer tide within him. At such times, to say the truth, a man talks better than his own nature. Harry Chichele knew he was in love ; but he didn't also know that what ho called love was just one half selfish self-admiration only. They had reached the summit of a seaward rock, looking down m the bay where the Seamew had foundered. Olwen rested for a moment against a weathered peak of bluff rock, by the side of a profound gorge out out in the lolid granite by the dashing waves. Below, lay a great 91 THE DBVIL's DIB. broken precipice, whose dark cliffB of hornblende and serpentine were crumbled above by wind and rain, and smoothed beneath by the cease- loss dashing of the winter waves. *' See," Harry cried, pointing down to it wilih his hand. " Up to the limit of the breakers the hard rock shines down there like polished Egyptian syenite ; but beyond that point it's all fissured by frost, and air, and rain, and storm, and covered over with its dappled coat of grey and silvery and jeUow. lichen. " *' It's always like that in Cornwall," Olwen answered, looking up at him timidly. *' You see it so, you know, in Brett's pictures." *' Yes," Harry went on. *' 1 know it i« ; T know it. You can trace the origin of all these lovely little Cornish coves from small rills, ju^t like this, which have worn themselves gorge-like valleys through the hard rock, or else from fissures which finally give rise to sea caves, like the one where Mohammad Ali and I rowed this morning for our early Bwim in the clear green vrater. The waves penetrate for a couple c^ hundred yards into the bowels of the rock, hemmed in by walls a roofs of dark serpentine, with interlacing veins of green and red. last, by constant dashing, they produce a blow-hole at the top ; and the blow-hole communicates with the open air above ; either because ' fissure crops up just there to the surface, or because the rain-water percolates and disintegrates the granite. Then, in process of time, the roof falls in ; the boulders get washed away by the waves ; and we find in the end a long and narrow cove liko yours at Polperran, still bounded on either side by tall clififs, whose summits the air and rainfall slowly wear away into your exquisite and fantastic Cornish pinnacles." I *'But what makes the beautiful little islands," she asked, where the gulls and cormorants sit alone above the big waves upon their preci- pitous perches ? " She longed to make him talk, he talked so wisely. ** Oh, that's just the slow action of the water, still," Harry answered airily; "always beating against the solid wall of crystalline rock." He paused a moment and glanced idly inland, and then again turned hia eye seaward. " Do you know. Miss Tregellas," he began once more — it had trembled on his lips for a moment to call her Olwen, but he re- frained for the time being out of pure reverence — *' I like to think that all this loveliness has been produced by the sea, out of pure accident, on the barren moors of your Cornish uplands. Nothing, after all — could be flatter or more desolate than the level waste whose seaward escarp- ment gives rise to all your romantic coves and pyramidal islets. The wind and the waves carved out this coast into varied shapes by force of blind currents, working unseen in endless play on hidden veins of harder or of softer crystal. Isn't there some force like that at work upon our owa lives somehow, which similarly at times takes all the dull prosaic details of our daily existence and moulds and informs them with some heavenly glory ? Where have I read those lines, I wonder— " ' Tha white and common daylight Btreansing through Some rich cathedral window, dim with saiut*. Falls on the olaaped hand of some atony knight Iii> palpitotiiig orimsou ' I " THl DiCVIL's DK. 88 They were quirering upon the very ver^e of the precipice now, Olwen prevented the fatal plunge once more by a momentary silence, which she broke by saying in a very different tone, " What on earth can the boys be doing down there by the cove, I wonder ? " "They're throwing stones at something in the water," Harry answered carelessly, not over-pleased at the diversion she had given to their talk. " Upon my word, now I come to think of it, I believe ifc niust be the masts of the Seamew." He drew his little field-glass from its case at his side, and focussed 11 •traight on the suspected object. "The young fiends ! " he exclaimed at last angrily. " It is the /^^eamcw, as clear as day. And what do you think those little brutes are doing ? The masts are standing up above the water's edge just where she sank, and the rats have clustered on the top of the rigging, and these young wretches are positively stoning the poor terrified creatures. How needlessly cruel ! — and how perfectly English ! On a spring morning, the French always declare, your T ^^lishman rises and says to himself, * It's a fine day ; let's ail go out ■C kill something.' As you and I are walking along the moor hef iget*-'^«, our hearts full of the delight of summer, and sympathy wiUi ♦ti*^ beauts and birds and living things, discoursing as we go of the joy ^ ' -kVing, these abominable little wretches are amusing themselves witii trjring to maim the terror-stricken rats who are clinging for dear life in their last despair to the tops of the rigging. I've been too near drown- ing at sea myself not to know what that means. A doctor's business ii to save life. We must go down at once and save these poor muttt fugitives." They scrambled down the steep pathway by the little rill to the white beach, where Harry's boat, which he hired for the bathing, lay drawn up on the sand by the little side cove. Harry pushed it down by main force to the sea, and rowed with the hot speed of fiery indignation to the masts of the Seamew, just overtopping the summer ripple. The boys, astonished and surprised, ceased their bombardment of stones an the strange gentleman from London approached the wreck. There, some eight or ten rats, with the curious instinct of their kind, had climbed their way up from the hold to the royals, and crouched together in abject fear, one beside the other, huddled together in that doubtful situation. Harry Chichele, with incautious haste, put out his hand to seize the foremost. The frightened brute, always savage by nature, and now alarmed beyond its wont by the cannonade of stones, unable to distinguish friend from foe, made a fierce dash at his well-meaning hand, and gashed his thumb deeply with its projecting incisors. Harry withdrew his hand in haste, and bound round the bleeding wound hurriedly with his pocket-handkerchief. Then, with the imperturbable good humour of his profession, he made a sudden dash once more tA the napo of the oflTonding animal's neck, and, before it had time to re- cover from its breathless surprise, dropped it like a kitten on the Itoot of the dingey. The other rats, with the usual sagacity of ratkind, having watched this incident with profound interest, and satisfied themselves, in their (S) 34 THB deyil'b die. own wise heads, that no immediate harm of any sort had come to their comrade, suflfered Harry to lift them quietly, one by one, from the rig- ging into the dingey without resistence ; and, as he rowed back again from the shore, the great brown beasts grouped themHelves expectant in the bows of the boat, waiting, all alert, for the very first chance of landing. As the dingey touched the shore with her bi)W8, with one accord they leaped out wildly on to the shingle, and without so much as waiting to thank their benefactor, scampered away at the top of their speed for the friendly shelter of the bracken and underbrush. Harry pulled the boat up by himself on to the beach, while Olwen, looking with unconcealed anxiety at his wounded hand, inquired, in an sager and timid tone, whether the rat had seriously hurt it. *' Oh no," Harry answered, with an unconcerned smile, unwinding thb K^ndkerchief and bathing the wound with fresh water from the little rili that flowed down the broken chine to form the cove. *' It's nothing — nothing. Please don't talk about it. Perhaps you would kindly bind it up for me." Olwen, who knew well ho'7 to make a surgical bandage, took the handkerchief he offered her, delighted with the chance of making her- self useful to him, and wound it round the wounded part with native dexterity. '* You don't think," she said, with an evident anxiety which flattered Harry's sense of self-importance, " that a bite from a creature, mad with terror like that, would be really serious and dangerous, do you ? Not like a rabid animal's, for example ? " Harry laughed off the suggestion lightly. It is so delightful to bc made much of. "Oh, dear no," he said ; " it's quite unimportant. Medical men are accustomed to these small injuries. It'll be all right again to-morrow morning." Olwen walked on beside him for a while in silence. Presently she gave a timid glance once more into his handsome face. " Dr. Chichele," she said with some hesitation, " I know it's awfully nervous, awfully stupid of me ; but could that rat possibly have got — germs, or anyt^uap* like that, — connected with the cholera about him anyhow ? " Harry's heart leaped up at the suggestion. How sweet that she should thus be ferreting out for herself, as it were, every possible source of danger for him. *' Oh, dear no," he answered, with peptscfc confidence. " Dismiss the idea at once from your mind, I beg of you. The wound's nothing at all to speak of. It'll heal, in my present vigorous condition of health, in less than no time. But it's very kind indeed of you, Miss Tregellas, to take so much personal interest in the matter." Olwen blushed, and wondered vaguely in her own heart whether she tad said too much. They walked on a little further, still without speaking. Then Harry paused and said suddenly, al6ud, but as if to himself, " I'm sorry I let those rats go, after all. I might have kept them and given them to the Begum. " " Give them to whom ? " Olwen asked, in wonder, A rat would be such an incomprehensible present. **0h, nothing," Harry answered, evasively, recollecting himMtf. THE DBVIL'8 DIK. M He didn't care to speak about the snake to Olwen. Snakes are such very uncanny possesBions. ** But, perhaps," — be ransacked his brains for an excuse — " perhaps it wasn't exactly right of me to let them go as I did among the farmers' com and gardens." As they walked in at the rectory gate on their return from their stroll, Mohammad Ali, seated on the garden chair beside Ivan Royle, ■canned them both closely with his keen and piercing oriental scrutiny. " They've been talking a great deal to one another," he muttered, half aloud ; * * but, thank heaven 1 the man hasn't yet proposed to her.'* Ivan Royle lifted his eyes in hasty inquiry. They met Mohammad Ali's full in front for a single second. Once more the same little panto- mime went on as before with Harry. Then Ivan looked down again, hot and red, at his drawing. In that indivisible point of time the two men had read one another's ideas aright. They said nothing, but rose and moved to the house together. They were all three in love at once with Olwen Tregellas, each man after his own fashion. CHAPTER VIL As Ivan Royle sat sketching in the garden again the morning after, while Mohammad Ali leaned back with Eastern indolence in the easy chair beside him, puffing a cigarette between his pearl-white teeth, the Englishman suddenly looked up with a curious glance from his piece of work, and said abruptly, without preface or apology, " Ali, why on earth did you say that yesterday ? " *' Say what ? " the Indian asked, with pretended unconsciousness, though he knew perfectly well in his own mind to what Ivan alluded. *' Say, ' Thank heaven he hasn't yet proposed to her,' " the artist continued quietly. Mohammad Ali held his peace for a moment. Then he flung away the end of his cigarette with petulant haste, raised himself on his elbows in the easy chair, and leaned across nearer to Ivan. ** Because I don't want Harry Chichele to mar that divine being's beautiful life for her," he answered softly, almost whispering. Ivan started. He pretended for a moment to trifle with his lights and shades. "Why not?" he asked presently, with a furtive look sideways at Ali. "Because you would make her a far better husband, Royle," Mohammad Ali answered incisively, after a short pause. The words were said with an evident struggle. They took Ivan Royle quite by surprise. ^^Mef " he cried. " ATe, did you say f Why me ? Why should you think of me at all in the matter, Ali } '* "Because, Royle, I know you love her." •* You know I love her ! But " And he hesitated. ** Yes. What ? Don't be afraid. Who am I f A poor black 1 I 86 THB DBTIL'S DIB. • flon't oount. Yon needn't be nervous before me. What is it t Tell me I Tell me all about it ! " 'But, Ali — I thought — you, too — admired her." Mohammad Ali leaned back in his chair with a pained face, and clenched his fists hard and tight together. " Admire her 1 " he cried. ** I adore her 1 I worship her 1 I kiss the very ground she walks upon 1 She is to me a divine creature 1 Royle, I would die for her I I would give my life up to make her happy." *» And yet " ** And yet I want to see you marry her. Yes, I do. I spoke the truth to you. Is that too deep for your sober, matter-of-fact English brain 1 It's not too deep for the inferior intelligence of the mere unsophisticated natural black man. I admire and respect and worship that heavenly apparition far too profoundly ever to let her know her- self the feeling I bear towards her." The Englishman looked at him with searching eyes. *' That — that is very noble of you, Ali," he answered at last. Mohammad Ali's lip quivered a little. *'You know what one at yourselves, a poet of your own, has written," he murmured. " *My spirit is too deeply laden ever to burden thine.' A black man, of course, has no right to love her. But he may at least keep his love to himself; he may feel for her in silence that 'devotion to something afar from the sphere of his sorrow,* that Shelley talks about." Ivan Royle's fingers trembled visibly on the sheet of paper. ** I can forgive you, Ali," he said. *' It's very natural. No man on earth could ever see her and not fall in love with her." I ** Not even a black man," the Mussulman assented fervently. ! *' But, Ali, why do you want me to marry her ? " "Because," Ali answered, *' I watched you here all these days — oh, so closely — ^you don't know how closely — no Englishman could ever / watch as we do ; as the cat watches the mouse's hole, so we Easterns watch people — and I see you're a good man and true ; a man who would try to make her happy." ** But why do you think, then, that Chichele wouldn't also ? You and he have been old friends. Why do you back me against him, as it were I Why did you say, * Thank heaven I ' yesterday ? " Mohammad Ali paused and deliberated. "Royle," he raid at last, with a burst of confidence, '* you're a genuine fellow, a good man and true, I do believe. I'll tell you all I know. It may be the merest prejudice on my part. Heaven knows we're all of us one mass of pre- judices, black people and white people all alike ; there isn't much to choose between us. But I feel the prejudice and I won't deny it. Did you ever hear of Begum Johanna of Deoband ? " Ivan shook his head decidedly. " You mentioned her once the other day," he said. " But what on earth has Begum Johanna of Deoband got to do with this question between myself and Chichele ? " ** Listen first, while I tell you her story," Mohammad Ali interposed with oriental gravity. And then, in his quiet Arab fashion, he told ivan at full length tiie episode of the slave girl, yexy much aa be had THB DEYIL'b DIB. S7 fccld it to Harry Chichela himself on the morning of his first arrival at Polperran. Ivan listened with curious interest as the Indian retailed to him that rhaatly tale of incredible Eastern cruelty and barbarism. When Ali had finished, he asked in a puzzled way, * * But what on earth has all this to do, my dear fellow, with me and Ghichele ? What connection has he with your people in India ? " Mohammad Ali looked him hard in the face. He answered slowly »nd very distinctly, growing hot in the cheeks with surprise and horror, •' My people, did you say, Royle ? My people ? My people ? No, no, my dear friend ; I have neither scot nor lot with Hindoos like that — me, a genuine freeborn Arab of the Arabs. His people, you mean ; his people, it is rather. For Harry Chichele, white as he looks, is a lineal descendant in the fourth degree of Begum Johanna, who buried alive the slave girl." *' Impossible ! " Ivan exclaimed, laying down his brush in his surprise) and incredulity. "The Chicheles are a well-known Anglo-Indian family ; and Harry's grandmother was one of the Peytons of Yorkshire, he tells me— a daughter, you know, of Lord St. Maurice's." "Exactly," Mohammad Ali went on, with merciless precision. * * His grandmother, as you say, was one of the Peytons of Yorkshire. And the Peytons sold themselves, body and soul, for Begum Johanna's broad gold mohurs. This is just how it all happened — you can look it up for yourself, if you choose, in the ' Peerage.' Begum Johanna's husband — let us call him, for convenience sake, her husband — was a certain adventurer of the name of K^rouac, a Breton Frenchman, a sailor by trade, and a soldier of fortune by predilection ; and it was he who founded the estate of Deoband. Now, the Begum had a son by him, one Philippe K^rouac, a half-caste of course, neither one thing nor the other, who inherited his mother's vast fortune, worth eighty thousand sterling a year if it was worth a penny. This Philippe K^rouac was educated in England, and married there. He had one daughter, Philippa Pindi, whom he called after her father and grand- mother ; for though the Begum at her conversion (I hope I use the correct expression) was baptized as Johanna, her native nauio was first Pindi. Well, Lord St. Maurice's eldest son married our friend, Philippa Pindi de Kerouac — it had grown to an aristocratic de by that time, if you please — and with her all the estate of Deoband. Or nither, he married the estate of Deoband, encumbered as it was with the awk- ward necessity for taking a brown-skinned half-caste Miss de Kerouac into the bargain . And that's how Harry Chichele, white as he looks, comes to be lineally descended in the fourth degree from that unspeak- able woman. Begum Johanna." " I see," Ivan Royle answered slowly. " But surely, Ali, you don't mean to say you distrust Harry Chichele merely — merely because he has in his veins some trifling fraction of the blood of your own people ? " Mohammad Ali started aghast once .nore. *' My own people," he oried, hftlf angrily. " Again you say my own people 1 No, no, Thank S8 THB devil's DHL heaven, no drop of that fearful woman's accursed blood flows in one vein of mine, my dear fellow." ** Well, Ali, I confess for my part I'd rather not be descended from that dreadful Begum of yours." ** That Begum of mine 1 Again you repeat it 1 How you persist in your national error 1 You mean that Begum of yours and of Harry Chichele's ! After all, the Begum was Hindoo by birth and Christian by religion — your own Aryan sister in race, while I am pure unadul- terated Semite. We, who are Moslems of the old rock in the North- West Provinces, we have nothing to do with either Hindoos or Christ- ians. We have lived among the heathen for twenty generations, exactly as the Jews have lived among you English, intermarrying only with our own stock, and keeping ourselves as separate still in blood as in religion. And just as the Jews are better than the English, so do we Moslems flatter ourselves in our own hearts we are of better blood than the heathen Hindoos who live around us." Ivan paused irresolute a moment ; then he said, " But, Ali, have you any more definite reason than that to give for distrusting Chichelef" *'Well," Mohammad Ali answered, "I'^ known Chichele for a good many years now, and till lately I've al^vays thought I liked him immensely. But the way you regard a man undergoes a decided change, of course, when you think— when you think what effect his life would have upon the life of a woman whom you respect and honour with all the force and energy of your nature. Of late it has often occurred to me, I confess, that Harry Chichele has two sides — an English side, and a side derived from his ancestress, the Begum. It's perfectly well known in India that every one of that terrible woman's descendants, of whatever race, down to the third and fourth generation, is as cold as steel and as cruel as a tiger. Now there's a certain keen, cold, scientifio doliberateness about much Harry Chichele does, that sometimes makes me tremble for the happiness of any woman who mii^ht have to pass her life tied up to him. Harry Chichele is good enough and pleasant enough in his own way to make a friend of ; he isn't good enough, if you ask me that, to entrust with the keeping of Miss Tregellas's entire future." "Ali," the young Englishman said with a sudden impulse, "I'm glad you say so, for I've half fancied it once or twice myself ; and then I've been ashamed of myself for even fancying it, after all that you and he have done together for me. I've said to myself, ' Is it only my own selfish feeling that makes me think I would make that beautiful pure woman a better husband than Harry Chichele ? ' I've hesitated and doubted in my own mind whether it wouldn't be a mean and wicked action on my part to try and win her if — if, as I thought, he wished to marry her. For one thing, I said to myself, wasn't it ungrateful of me ; for another thing, I said, could I ever do as much for her in life as he could do. And then I imagined I saw in him underlying signs of a cruel, hard, cold disposition, and I was angry with myself for ventur- irig to see them, lest I should be doing the man a real imjuBtice." Ali spoke with singular earnestness. " Harry Chichele'* a very good THi devil's Dtl. 89 fellow in his way/* he said ; *' but heaven fprhid, while you and I live, he should ever many 01 wen Tregellas. I ought to have spoken to you sooner about it. I was wrong to wait, out of foolish shrinking. Mav Allah grant it isn't now too late 1 Royle, Royle, for that good woman 8 dear sake, you must try to save her from Harry Chichele. There was a long pause, which Ivan broke at last by saying abruptly^ " Ali, you're a better man after all, ten thousand times, than either of us ! 'The utter way you sink yourself and your own hope in this matter makes me feel ashamed of my dreadful selfishness." Mohammad Ali smiled a bitter smile. "My dear fellow," he answered, with a feeble attempt at forced gaiety, "I deserve no credit at all for that. Kismet : it is fated. No other course is possibly open to me. It's all that destiny about which I spoke to you. I admire and respect Miss Tregellas immensely. Her happiness is to me a matter of great moment. I would give my very eyes, if I could, to serve her. I fear and mistrust Harry Chichele. I don't want to see her make over her precious life to his tender mercies. I recognize you as a better, a truer, and a gentler man. I would like to see you, therefore, make her happy. For myself, who and what am I ? A blank ! A nobody 1 A nothing 1 A cypher 1 Why are we two talking together as we do talk together now ? Because I am a black man, while you are a white one. Otherwise, the thing would be impossible. Could you have talked so with any white man ? Never, never ? Why can you unburden your- self so to me T Why can I unburden myself so to you ? Because we both know in our own hearts that, so far as Miss Tregellas or any other Englishwoman is concerned, a man of my colour is no man at all, but a thing, a being, an abstract conception. Look at me, Royle. I'll tell you the whole simple truth. I love that beautiful divine apparition with all the profoundest love of which my nature is capable. Well, then, it's my plain duty — never while she lives to let her know it. The knowledge of it could only distress her. Why should I hurt her tender heart by allowing it to see the scars on mine ? I have but one thought for her — to make her happy. I fear and tremble for her if she accepts Chichele. Won't you trust your own heart, man, and step in between them in time to save her ? " •* Ali," the Englishman cried, " you are too good, you are too noble, you are too generous, you are too chivalrous ! I wish I was half such a fellow as you are t In my love there is too much selfishness. Yours seems to be all pure devotion." Mohammad Ali smiled sadly again. " It's easy to be generous and chivalrous, my friend," he said, " when you are only a black man. If I were white as you are to-day, Royle, I would speak for myself. I would speak quite otherwise. As it is, I have only one desire— to make Miss Tregellas's life happy. I really believe you are worthy of her. I really doubt Harry Chichele. What else can I do but act upon my belief ? Don't lose another moment, I beg of you. For her own sake as well as for yours, don't let Chichele carry her off undefended." "But, Ali, am^ %fnt herl Am I gaud enough? Am I worthy •fkerl" 40 THB DfiVIL'S DIB. Mohammad Ali looked hard at him. "No man is worthy of her,** he Raid shortly. " No man deserves her. No man in good enough. But you will do as well as another, and a great deal better than Harry Chichele. If I did not think so, I would not have spoken to you." CHAPTER VIIL That evening Ivan Royle had tea in the garden for the first time with the rest of the party. After tea, the three men wandered off upon the moor together, the rector wishing to show Harry and All a remarkable logan-stone, and Ivan and Olwen were left alone for a while in the garden. Ivan had never before seen the beautiful Cornish girl look so purely beautiful as she did that evening. Evidently Olwen was at her best, and she blushed and dropped her eyes from time to time in a delicious way that niude her even more bewitchingly pretty than ever. **You seem yourself this evening," the young painter began tenta- tively. " 1 don't think I've seen you look so well and happy ever since we came to Polperran to bring you trouble." ** Perhaps," Olwen said, a little archly, "that's because you're getting better." Ivan was pleased. So small a thing pleases us in those supreme moments of a lifetime. "Miss Tregellas, will you do me a great favour ? Will you let me sketch you just as you stand there ? " Olwen laughed a merry little laugh. " As you please," she said. " But what will you do with it ? Will you send me in, full length, to the Academy ? How funny it'd look to see one's self there, stuck up on the walls for everbody to gaze at — ' Portrait of a Lady 1 " *' I shall send it to the Academy," Ivan answered, quite seriously, arranging his easel ; " and, if I do my sitter anything like justice, it ought to attract immense attention." "Why, now, Mr. Royle you're really convalescent. You're begin- ning to say pretty things to me." Ivan Roylo looked up at her with admiring eyes. He had fixed his canvas straight upon the little easel, and was sketching in the beautiful outlines of that graceful figure. He worked rapidly and with practised deftness. Olwen looked back at him and smiled in return. He had never seen her so frank and engaging as she was that evening. She seemed to have forgotten her usual girlish, blushing timidity, and to treat him more with cordial unrosorve as she might have treated her own brother. Olwen kept her place opposite him exactly as he had posed hor, and watched him steadily as his hand ran free in easy curves over his squar* of canvas. The young painter went on with his work for a whd« in THK DEYIL's DIB. 41 Bilence ; then, with an irresistible ii pulse, he laid down the brush and came over to her quite suddenly. * Miss Tregellas," he said, without any preface, his voice trembling slightly as he spoke ; *' you have saved my life. Will you make it happy for ever by sharing it ? " Olwen drew back, astonished at his abruptness. She looked up into his handsome face with wondering surprise. This was indeed an attempt to carry her by storm. "Mr. Royle," she said, simply, '* I didn't know you meant that. Oh no ; I cannot, I cannot." Ivan Royle looked her back in the face with unspoken inquiry in the depths of his deep, earnest, blue eyes. Olwen had never nc^tioed before how deep, and true, and gentle those eyes were. She shrank a little before them ; they seemed to look her through and through, with some infinite yearning — so tenderly and so profoundly. "Why not?" he asked, in the same soft voice. " Have I been too precipitate only, or is there — is there some other reason ? " Olwen raised her eyes once more till they met his. She hardly dared to look him in the face and answer him back. "There is another reason," she whispered at last very softly. Iran spoke not another word. Her eyes had told him plainly what it was. He saw it ; Ire knew it. Harry Cliichele had been beforehand with him. He let his hand drop idly by his side. The gesture was full of unspoken despondency. His eyes for a moment grew very dim. ' ' Miss Tregellas," he said, " I'm truly sorry for it. But if it is so, I dare not regret it. I hope it's for the best for you. Forgive my audacity. Forget what I have said. I hope we may still be friends always." Olwen raised her eyes once more, with timid lashes, and met the young man's fully and frankly, " We shall be friends always," she answered, taking his hands with not unwomanly kindness. '• I feel I have a sort of right in you now. Don't let this mistake come up as a shadow between us. I shall always remember with pleasure the happy time we have all spent here this year together." "Thank you," Ivan said simply, pressing her hand in his like a friend's. " It's very good of you indeed to say so. It was presump- tuous of me ^ver to have hoped as I did ; but a man will soiiietimea hope presumptuously. Let us not say a word more about it. You will give me your friendship, you say. That alone is more than I dare ask ; I shall prize it above everything, absolutely everything, that any one else could ever give me." Olwen stood still half irresolute on the lawn, holding his hand even yet in hers. She knew that she ought to leave him at once —that any other«girl would instantly leave him ; and yet she could not bear in her heart to do it. He had been so ill, and he seemed so sorry. She stood and looked as him irresolutely again and again. Why did she wait there ? WJiy did she not go 1 Why did she trifle with the poor young painter ? Olwen Tregellas fancied herself in love with Harry Chichelo— the fluent talker, the clever admirer. In that belief she had that morning answered an almost inaudible "Yea" to bia ardent questioning. As she faced Ivan Koyle there now on tht a TBI DEYIL'I DII. lawn, she did not know — even she herself — that the beating of her heart told her that she had answered the wrong person. And yet she could not choose but stop. Some invisible power that she knew not of compelled her to wait against her will and linger on the lawn. She roused herself at last from her strange reverie, and dropped the painter's hand as if half guilty, " Let us go on with the picture," she said softly. Ivan Royle, recalled to himself by the word and action, took up his brush again, and began in some half-hearted mechanical way to pretend acquiescence with her strange command. How odd of her to. wish him to go on at present I At first he could not fix his mind upon the pic- ture. But after a while, as he looked again and again at that pure, ■weet face, the light in Olwen's eyes burned so bright, and the colour in her cheeks came and went so daintily, that he could not help himself from getting interested at last, and hastily painting in the whole face — ^just as it had rejected him. He was glad, now, she had asked him to do it. He wanted to keep it for a memento of Olwen. He stopped there painting, with fiery energy, till the light failed, and the shades of evening began to draw in round the rectory garden. Then he brought in his easel on his arm to the verandah, and took a Beat under the broad roof outside the open drawing-room window. But still Olwen did not go away. She sat on the verandah, and looked out into the evening, waiting for her father and the two young men to return from the logan-stone. There was a certain unwonted pensive- ness in her tone, she knew not why. She was very sorry for Ivan Royle. Poor fellow I She began to see now how deeply he was grieved. She began to see it, and for his sake she regretted it bitterly. If she had only had two hearts to give, she could have given one of them then to Ivan. As for Ivan, he sat there as in a dream, realizing to himself for the first time in his life that this beautiful girl, whom he had barely known for a fortnight yet, was hencefoi th and for ever a component element in his being and his happiness. He could understand Mohammad All better now. Henceforth he, too, must live for one object — to make Olwen Tregellas happy. By-and-by voices sounded at the gate, and the rector and the two young men strolled lightly up the little avenue. Harry Ghichele and Ali joined the silent couple on the verandah. '* What ! sitting out in the twilight," Harry cried half banteringly in his cheery voice, already with the very tone of assured possession. '* How delightfully romantic. And with the moon rising behind the clouds too. What a lucky fellow you are, Royle. And what have you been doing this afternoon ? Sketching Miss Tregellas, I do declare 1 Oh, let me see it. Why, my dear fellow, this is just magnificent 1 You must finish this. It's gloriously begun. We haven't seen you do anything one half so good. Your flesh tones are simply splendid. Figure mutt be your forte. Why do you go and waste yourself on landscape t " '* Perhaps," Ivao said, smiling r^grotluli^t " Vb* fubjeot inspired THS devil's DIB. 43 Harry darted a quick glance at him as he stoccl, aoraewhat dejected, by the shadowy 8k>atch, with his brush in his hand. '* And well it might," he answered quickly, as 01 wen, blushing, pretended to busy herself with a rose from the verandah. ** This is a beautiful picture. You must finish it in detail. And you must let me have it when it's all done, Royle. 1 shall buy it to bewin my collection." Ivan glanced back at him a trifle coldly, not to say haughtily. ** I have begun it for myself," he answered, with a forced smile. '* An artist is not a common huckster. I want to keep it as a momento of Polperran. But if Miss Tregellas would like it herself, of course, that's quite another matter. I shall be happy to give it to her, and paint my- self a replica from the original as soon as it's completed." Mohammad Ali, glowering from behind , said nothing, but stood in the background with his impenetrable oriental eyes fixed steadily in a keen gaze upon the three chief actors. He was scanning them all with that close and cat-like Eastern scrutiny of which he had himself spoken to Ivan. Presently Olwen pulled out her watch, and rose with a start. *'I shall be late for dinner, if I don't make haste," she said simply. Harry went up to his own room, too, and Ivan and the Mussulman were left alone in the twilight under the verandah. As soon as they were by themselves Mohammad Ali came up like a shadow to his new friend's side, and passing his arm through his with silent sympathy, led him gently and unresistingly into the drawing- room. Then he sat down beside him on the sofa in the corner, and said, in his soft, quiet voice, instinct with all a woman's delicate feeling, "My dear, dear fellow, I'm very sorry. For your sake, I'm unfeign- edly sorry ; but for hers — for hers — ten thousand times more so." •' Why, how do you know it all? " Ivan cried, in surprise. Mohammad Ali smiled a profound smile of oriental inscrutability. ** Have I not eyes ? " he answered with a shrug. '* Have I not ears t Have I not senses ? Do I not know all — all that has hai)pened ? I have read it on the open book of your three faces — English faces, easy to read as a church clock or a flaring advertisement. This evening, while Harry Chichele and I were out, you asked Miss Tregellas — asked her boldly. And Miss Tregellas told you in her frank way she could not be yours, kindly, but decidedly. And you asked her why : and she answered you at once, or, at least, she let you know by acquiescent silence, that she'd accepted Harry Chichele this very morning. And then Miss Tregellas, instead of going away, stopped on the lawn, and you went on painting her picture for all that, for very love of her. And you painted it well, because you loved her ; a last regretful momento of Polperran. Is that not so ? Eh, my patient ? Have I not correctly read the symptoms 1 " " It is so," Ivan answered with a quiet sigh. ** You have read them only too correctly." •* But I can tell you more than that," the Indian went on, with flash- ing eyes and an almost excited air that was very difierent from his usual passivity. *' I can tell you something that you yourself do not know — that even Miss Tregellas, in her own soul has never guessed at. I only know it — I alone. Miae Tregellas lovee you.** 44 THB devil's Dl*. ** Oh no," Ivan cried, with a sudden gesture of profound dissent. *' Tou're wrong there, Ali. If she did, she would never liave accepted Chichele'a proposal." The Indian smiled his calm smile of Eastern superiority once more. *' I said, she did not know it herself," he answered. '*If she knew it, she would not have taken him. But many a woman misinterprets her own mind. The heart speaks often a foreign language. If I read her right, Royle, I tell you for a truth it is you she loves— you, not Chichele. She has made a fatal, fatal error. But it may not yet be too late to correct it." CHAPTER IX. Two months had come and gone, and a November fog with its black pall had taken possession of the heart of London. In the top room of a wretched lodging-house tenement in Marylebone, a girl of twelve sat by herself late at night on a rough wooden box, which did duty at once for chair and cupboard. It was an unplaned deal box, that had once held coarse bars of soap at the neighbouring grocer's ; and with the trifling exception of a bundle of rags in the far corner, regarded for practical purposes as a bed, it formed the whole and sole furniture of that miserable attic. A cheap candle, stuck in an old ink-bottle on the floor by the bedside, diffused a darkness visible through the vile room. The one window was broken and stuffed with brown paper ; the floor lay bare and littered with bits of broken glass ; and the last remnants of the afternoon's rain still dripped slowly, drop by drop, through the joints in the loose tiles, into a tin pan of very dirty water. An open Btaircase led up to the attic from below ; the noise of oaths and quarrel- ling resounded dimly frcan the other apartments of the wretched lodg- ing-house. The girl herself, though she would have given her age, if asked, as " going thirteen," had a face that might easily have passed for thirty, and a stumpy, stunted, undeveloped little body that would have done scanty justice to ten years old. Her poor small hands were thin and skinny, her matted hair appeared never to have made acquaintance with the domestic comb, and the tattered clothes that hardly covered her sharp angular little limbs and wizened bones were full of holes, and wretchedly insufficient in number and thickness. The child crouched almost double on the box, and gnawed her nails hungrily a» she crouched, peHiaps, because she had nothing else in particular then, or generally, to exercise her teeth upon. For a long time the unhappy little atom sat there in silence, brood- ing to herself over Heaven knows what awful childish vagaries, and never stirring or moving on her hard scat for a single moment. At last, the bundle of clothes in the corner quivered and shook, and the child turned sharply round at tb« rustle, with the precocious alert attention THE devil's die. 46 ti children who know that a savage blow is the sur« result of a passing second's dereliction of duty. A woman's head and arm raised themselves feebly above the bundle of rags. It was a face of the most horrible bloated description — one of those pufiy, crimson faces out of which the very semblance of our com- mon humanity seems to have been pounded long ago by drink and ill- usage. It had no distinct features to speak of ; frequent smashing had reduced them all by gradual stages to a general livid, pulpy equality. A few old scars diversified the otherwise regular surface ; but for those, the whole face consisted just of one raw red mass, with little pig's eyea half obliterated by the swollen eyelids, and a feeble mouth that opened slowly whenever it spoke, in slobbering stupidity. Nevertheless, the voice, though hoarse, was still powerful and rasping ; it dealt in tonea of angry command, and in the vilest variety of low London accent. "Where did you put the gin, Lizbeth ? " the voice asked, with loud querulousness, as the puffy red hand fumbled round and round on the floor close by, groping eagerly after the expected bottle. The child raised her head to reply. " Put it away where you can't get none, mother," she said. *'You ain't to 'avenomore gin. It'a the gin as is a-killing of you." The woman made no immediace answer. She groped around still with her hand, till she came at last upon some solid object. It was the old ink-bottle, that served the office of candlestick. She took out the candle with tremulous fingers, and held it shakily in her left hand. Then, raising herself with an eflfort, in her bundle of rags, and balanc- ing the empty earthenware bottle dexterously in her right, she fluag it across the room with all her force, and with deliberate aim at the shrinking child's unhappy head. The girl made no attempt in any way to shirk or dodge it. She knew too well the consequences of defending herself. She simply crouched closer than ever, and let the frightful missile hit her on the temple above the left ear with a blow that rang through the whole unsteady attic. In a moment the blood flowed freely from the wound, and the child, half-stunned and sobbing to herself, held up the nearest rag of her clothes to staunch the bleeding. " That warmed you up, I bet, anyways," the woman cried hoaraelj from the bed" Of rags. *' That'll learn you for to disobey your mother another time, image. 'Old that row, and git me the gin, will yer 1 If you don't, I'll rise up from the bed, as sick as I am — blowed if I won't — and break every precious bone in your cursed body 1 " Lizbeth rose, sobbing at the word, and crawled slowly across to the bed, the wound on her head still bleeding profusely. ** Bring me that there candlestick," the woman said, aiming a savage blow at her cowering daughter. The child went once more and fetched the bottle, with blood and hair still sticking in a clot to its sharp angle. Somewhat appeased by this prompt obedience, the mother h>plaoed the candle in its impromptu socket, and said again, in her qaerulow tone, " Git me the gin, Lizbeth." 46 THE devil's DIB. Lizbeth trembled, but went across the room, and produced the bottl« from a hole in the wall, where the lath and plaster had peeled oflF, and formed a natural cave, or cupboard. The woman took the bottle lovingly in her bloated hands, poured out a couple of wineglassfuls of raw spirits into the tin mug that Lizbeth handed her, and drained it off at a single gulp, without one drop of water to qualify its fiery flavour. *' There," she said, mollified, as she finished her drink, " that does f me more good than nothink. That warms up the 'eart and the inwards, that does. There's no medicine like a drop of Old Tom. 'Eaven's best gift, I calls it. It's all good alike, in 'ealth or in sickness." And she dozed off gradually in a drunken sleep, while poor little Lizbeth, relieved for the moment, crept off to her box and mounted guard there, silent as before, with her wounded scalp still sore and bleeding. By-and-by, a neighbour's head popped above the floor at the open staircase — a frizzy red head, adorned with endless twists of unkempt carroty hair, and a good-natured Irishwoman's face smiling broad beneath them. '* An* how is she now, honey ?" the good-natured Irishwoman asked in a loud whisper. ** Is it dhrunk she is agin, thin 1 Och, more's the pity 1 The dhrink'll be the death of her, anyway. An* how do you think she does the night now ? ** " She*s awful bad,*' Lizbeth murmured l#w. '* The fever's took her worse'n ever. I don't know as she can live long." And the child began to sob afresh, as if her little heart would break. **Och, don't cry, thin, darlint,*' the Irishwoman said, advancing a ■tep up the open staircase. ** Sure, an* she'll get better, niver fear. She*8 not the koind that*8 given to dying. Why, whativer ails your poor head, thin ? Shell not be afther sthriking ye wid the bottle, will Bhe?" " Oh, don't, Mrs. Flynn 1 ** the child cried piteously. "Don*t you touch it. It*s that painful. Poor dear, she took an' throw that bottle at me." Mrs. Flynn examined the wound carefully, and washed it as well M she was able in her existing state— having herself partaken of a dhrop of the craytur — with the dirty water in the tin pan. She washed it twice, and dressed it roughly with a wet rag. Then, nodding farewell to the little sentinel, with a good-humoured smile, and many exhorta- tions not to take on about it (as if these things must be expected every- where in the coarse of nature), she disappeared down the steep steps iigain, and left Lizbeth once more alone with her own reflections. It was half an hour laker when a man's step was heard on the stairs — a heavy step, with hobnailed boots — and a loud voice gave out a bold street crv, sung in swinging measure to a curious monotonous lilting sing-song. *' Penny-wink, penny-wink, penny-wink, oh I Take a pin ; stick him in ; turn him round ; pull him out ; penny wink, penny-wink, p«nnyb9ulutel;y nothing. The policemen waved them quietly aside, and THB devil's DIB. 49 with professional instinct proceeded in a sober business-like way to collar the unresisting Bill, who stood there still with his hands in his pockets, inanely smiling at the havoc he had wrought, and apparently even more jolly than ever. Two of them went out and fetched a stretcher. "Take the woman to the Middlesex Hospital," the leader said, in his official way. One constable and two or three of the lodgers took up the stretcher. The woman opened her eyes as they lifted her up. " Bill," she cried hoarsely through her set teeth, with a savage oath unfit to be recorded, " you shall swing for this I You shall 1 You shall swing for it, you beggar I " " Shouldn't be surprised if I did," the man muttered, gazing back in her face with imperturbable brutal carelessness. " That'd be just like the law of England now 1 'Ang me for smashing a woman to-night as *ud 'ave to 'ave died anyhow to-morrer. That's wot the beaks calls administration of justice I Justice, indeed 1 I'd justice 'em, wigs an' all, the 'ole blooming addle-'eaded lot of *em ! " And he laughed a loud half-tipsy laugh, while he submitted to be led away quietly and unresistingly between the two stout and resolute-looking policemen. As for Lizbeth, she rose from beside the bed of rags when they took her mother, and followed the stretcher close like a dog, till she reached the steps of the Middlesex HospitaL OHAPTSR X. That evening, in Harry Chichele's comfortable room at the liliddle- sex Hospital, Harry and Mohammad Ali sat late by the fireside dis- cussing the very remarkable results that Harry had deduced, by the aid of the microscope, from his study of the germs in the polluted water from Santander, washed ashore in the cask from the wreck of the SeO' mew. **Yes, the rabbits, every one of them, died within twenty-four hours," Hairy Chichele remarked with much aniuiation. '* I'm culti- vating their germs now in a new medium, after Pasteur's method, and after my own. My own, as I suspected, is infinitely superior — infinitely superior. It modifies the virus far more perfectly." It was a curious place, that neat private sitting-room of Harry Chichele's. The Begum, whom he had brought back, after all, in her box from Cornwall, despite the protestations of the Great Western Rail- way Company and its accredited agents, could have had no reasonable cause to complain of the want of that congenial poisonous atmosphere which Mohammad Ali had so confidently promised her. The whole place fairly reeked of infusion, germs, viruses, and poisons. It was, m fact, the private laboratory of an able and enthusiastic scientific poison fancier. M^mmad Ali bad jiut returned to town, six weeks Uter bbui so THl DIVIL'B DIl. Harry Chichele, after a round of visits to country houses, among old friends and college acquaintances. He had been to stop with Ivan Koyle, among others, at a place in Warwickshire, where he had made the acquaintance of Seeta Mayne, the well-known novelist, sister of the ill-fated owner of the Seamew. Ali had taken rather a dielike at first sight to Seeta Mayne, he knew not why. She was one of those terrible women, he said to Harry, who oppress you at once witlj a burdensome sense of their cleverness and their greatness. A woman to admire, indeed, from a safe distance ; better known in her books than her proper person. " So different from Miss Tregellas," Ali added with a sigh, looking hard at Harry, and ruminating inwardly. " I should like to meet her, all the same," Harry answered off hand, rising from his velvet-covered easy-chair, and opening the window half an inch, as he candidly remarked, to let in a little of the brown fog, and let out the fumes of that nasty Calabar bean he had been experi- menting upon. " I can't tell you how much I admire her books. She's a wonderful delineator of human nature." t A decanter of pale wine stood upon the table, with a paper slip pasted as label across the outside. Mohammad Ali took it up carelessly in his hand. '* I don't mind taking a glass of your sherry," he said, pouring it out, '*the Koran to the contrary, notwithstanding. Of all the Prophet's laws, I've always found that the easiest broken." And he poured himself out a glassful with casual ease, into a wine-glass that stood beside it on the table. *' Sherry 1 " Harry Chichele cried, in a tone of alarm, rushing for- ward just in time to prevent his friend from raising it to his lips. ** Goodness gracious, Ali, what in the name of heaven are you doing or thinking of 1 Never, for your life, eat or drink anything, however seemingly harmless, that you find lying about loose in this laboratory of mine. The very cups and saucers are poisonous. That's suspected sherry, sent in last night for my critical opinion by the Government analyst. A barrister fellow over at Reigate popped off suddenly day before yesterday — you must have seen the case in the Times. His wife and he weren't on the best of terms, it seems. Question of an actress —the usual story. He went to bed at night happy and jolly, and woke up early next morning to find himself dead for the last three hours. If you'd drunk that glassful off, I dare say, Ali, you'd have been as dead by this time as the dog and the barrister." "Very likely," Mohammad Ali answered, with his usual Eastern calmness of demeanour, as his friend touched the electric bell at his side for a glass of sherry that was not suspected. "That shows that the Prophet was right, after all. Avoid all appearance of evil. You've got some new things here, Harry, since I went away, I see by the labels." **0h, pretty well," Harry Chichele answered in the half affected depreciatory voice of the connoisseur who exhibits his treasures to an intelligent spectator. \ Mohammad Ali paced up and down the room with a critical air before kthe mysterious jars an4 cupboards. -* Canadian poison ivy." he mus- THE devil's DIB. 51 mured softly, reading the labels ; ** that's new now, isn't it ? Ah, yes, I thought 80 ; those sumach extracts are so extremely interesting. Thorn- apple again — four fresh varieties. I saw your paper about those in Nature. Yield an insipid narcotic alkaloid allied to atropine. Beauti- ful, beautiful 1 Your experiments and results were exceedingly pretty. Have you over noticed, by the way, that deadly nip;htshade grows no- wrhere in England except about the ruins of your old monasteries ? Speaks badly for the morality of the mediaeval fathers that, doesn't it ? Unless, indeed, they only used it for the painless removal of Jews, Turks, heretics, and infidels." " Of whom you would have been one," Harry Chichele interposed, smiling. "Of whom I should have been one, no doubt," the Mohammedan went on with grave composure. " The monks would have converted me with great pleasure, from the error of my ways, at least into a corpse, if not into a Christian. What's this here ? American hemlock — paralyzes the muscles of respiration, I fancy. Manchmeal, Indian hemp, Madagascar Ordeal Poison. What's the antidote ? They must have something the medicine men give them to counteract the evil effects of that whenever necessary, or it couldn't possibly be used for an ordeal. All ordeals admit of dodging, that's what they're for ; the medicine men always work the oracle." " Of course," Harry Chichele answered, pouring out the unsuspicious sherry. *' Upas tree," Ali went on, running them over. " That's new, again. I've seen that in India. Affects the spinal cord instantaneously, and causes death by universal tetanus. And here's aconitine, the same as in the sherry there. Whatever did your barrister go and use such stuff as that for, I wonder ? " " I can't imagine," Harry answered lightly. *' The more fool he. A man must be a fool in the nineteenth century if he has reasons for wish- ing to get rid of anybody, to go and do anything so clumsy as poison him. Poison can be always detected nowadays. And especially when there are so many other better ways now possible that absolutely and utterly defy detection." *'What ways?" Mohammad Ali asked glancing up hastily, with some curiosity. "Oh, physiological and pathological ways, I mean, of course. Why, if you or I, who are practised medical hands, had any good grounds for wishing to disembarrass our career of any obnoxious person or persons, do you mean to say we could'nt find a thousand ways ready to hand for dexterously removing them without arousing undue suspicion ? Of course we could, my dear fellow, put them out of the way as soon as look at them. "/couldn't, thank heaven," Ali, answered, drawing a long breath. "And what's more, I shouldn't like to be able, either. Elnowledge of the means of crime is a dangerous thing — even for a Moslem." ^^ " But not fcr the emancipated," Harry Chichele interposed airily. ' The masses, of course, ought misuBe their infanaatlQii — they're not 62 THE devil's DIB. to be trusted with knowledge like that ; but the emancipated would never dream of employing it except in the interests of humanity and of science. Well, now, I'll tell you about these lovely germ researches of mine, Ali. I've arrived at really wonderful results. I'm just on the very verge, do you know, of establishing a totally new conception of the entire question." Mohammad Ali seated himself, all ears, beside the table, while Harry Chichele pulled forward his microscope, and drew from his drawers a number of slides and several sheets of pencil diagrams. In two minutes, the pair of enthusiasts were deep in a profound professional discussion, Harry Chichele demonstring with immense ardour, while Mohammad Ali, attentive and eager, listened and criticized with obvious ad- miration. At liist the Indian leaned back in his chair with an air of complete though half-unwilling conviction. *' You've proved your point, Harry," he cried ; "not a doubt about it; you've fairly proved it. There's only one thing you want now, and that's a patient who diei in the final collapsing stage of lodging-house fever. If the germs there — microbes or bacteria, or whatever else you choose to call them — do really exhibit this jointed condition which you suspect, then your theory of their origin from fungoid sporules will be simply and solely a mathematical demonstration. It's a great discovery — a splendid discovery. You're lucky to have made it. Your series of slides is just magnificent — especially the germs from the cholera-water and the rinderpest in cattle." " Yes," Harry Chichele answered in a voice of modest self-con- gratulation. ** I flatter myself it's a neat demonstration. I'm only waiting for that final test — a case of which is sure to drop in before long — and then I shall read a paper on the subject before the Royal Society. I'm anxious about this paper, and about the result of the investigation, because, to tell you the truth, I think, Ali, it'll make my fortune. And, as you know, I have certain special and exceptional reasons for wishing just now to get my fortune made." The Indian smiled a grave smile of uneasy acquiescence, and glanced at the pretty cabinet photograph of Olwen Tregellas, framed in a dark blue velvet mount, which hung above the centre of Harry Chichele's mantlepiece. Harry followed him closely with his eyes. *' Of course," he went on, perceiving the drift of Mohammad All's thoughts, " I could marry even now, if I chose, on my own little means — my grandmother's money — which would be enough to support us in * genteel economy,' as the porter calls it ; but 1 don't want to do that. I don't want to impose upon my wife a * genteel economy.' I want to make myself a place in the world first, and make it a place fit for Olwen herself to occupy." He called her " Ohven," quite unconcernedly ow, and it grated on Mohammad All's ear to hi.>ar him. ** Now, if I an succeed in proving the truth of my theory, I shall have put myself at once in the very first ranks of the profession, shan't I ? Since Jenner discovered vac- cination, in fact, no bigger thing's been done in xnedicinQ thftQ this nevr THS dbyil's dis. 53 hypothesis. And for Olwen'i sake, I should like to do it I should like to think I had a chance of ending by becoming some day President of the Royal College of Physicians, and making my wife into Lady Chichele. *' I hare no doubt at all you will," Mohammad Ali answered abstrac- tedly. ** You're cut out for it. It's your natural goal. You're by far the ablest man in the profession that I know of. Harry, did Miss Tregellas give you that portrait of herself that Royle did for her ? " '*No," Harry replied, glancing once more with a depreciating look at the photograph on the mantlepiece, "or else it'd been standing where that wretched likeness does now ; for I must say Royle caught her expression and her graceful figure quite admirably — a most life-like portrait. But Olwen didn't think she ought to let me have it — at present — she said. Royle seemed a little stand-ofiish about it, you re- member : spoke rudely to me, not to say foolishly ; and she felt aa if she were in honour bound to keep it herself, as he gave it to her and refused it to me, until — well, until, in short, it naturally comes into my possession, with everything else that belongs to Olwen. She was quite right, and I perfectly agreed with her ; but I must say 1 should have liked all the same to have had that picture." Mohammad Ali drummed upon the table. ** Your grandmother's money," he said, reverting. " You get your income from her, do you? She was a Peyton, if I recollect aright — a Yorkshire Peyton. Harry, do you happen to know anything about your grandmother's family ? " •* Well, not very much, if you ask me that. I'm anything but curi«KiB in these matters. Genealogies have precious little interest for me. I am what I am. I care very little about who went before me. Science disregards families and pedigrees." " You are what you are 1 No, no, Harry," the Mussulman cried, with a sudden gesture of disapprobation. ** You speak neither like a Moslem nor a scient fie man. Has not the whole burden of our own age been simply that — hereditary genius, hereditary insanity, heredi- tary morals, hereditary crime ? You fancy you stand alone in the world ; that you can break with the past and create the future. You think you can make yourself what you choose yourself. My dear fel- low, you're grievously mistaken. We're each of us but a new incarna- tion of our fathers and mothers — a fresh creator, as our Hindoos would call it, of the ancestral spirit. It behoves us all to know somewhat of our progenitors ; we are bone of their bone, blood of their blood, and their sins shall be visited on us — aye, and repeated by us, too, in our own persons— unto the third and fourth generation." At that very moment, as Harry opened his lips to reply, a gentle tap sounded upon the door, and a nurse, in her white cap and regulation apron, putting in her head, said briefly, ** Doctor, you're wanted, if you please, in the fever ward. A complicated case. Fever and acci- dent." The two men, disturbed at the news, ran upstairs hastily, and arrived at once in the crowded fever ward. On a cot at the far end, a ghastly light met their eyes — a woman with a bloated pulpy-looking face, aU 64 THB devil's DIB. hacked and cut about the cheeks and forehead, with o2)en wounds, still raw and red and bleeding faintly. The surgeon in attendance stood at the head of the bed. "Good evening, Chichele," he said, as they entered. '* Good evening, Ali. Why, I'm glad to see you back again in England. I've sent for you, Chichele, to look at this woman — new case — just admitted. Sarah Wilcox, they give her name, from a low lodging den in the slums of Marylebone. It's a police case, you see, of the ordinary character ; but it's very complicated — very complicated. Man's assaulted his wife with an empty gin bottle, and cut her all over the head and shoulders with the broken pieces. At the same time the woman's dying already — in the last stage of lodging-house fever. It's a neat forensic question, as you perceive ; and 1 shall want you to help me in watching the thing through carefully, for, if the patient dies of the wounds, of course, or of gangrene or blood-poisoning arising from them, why, then^ as you know, it'll be wilful murder, or, at least, man- slaughter. But if she only dies of the fev er itself, without death hav- ing been in any way accelerated by the row, why, then, it's merely the common case of aggravated assault. We shall have to be very accurate in observing it, for the question's almost sure to be raised sooner or later before a jury." Harry Chichele looked down on the woman with unfeigned and unconcealed delight. "I'll take every care of her," he said, "every possible care of her, you may be sure, Macpherson. The case, as it happens, is just one I was anxious to observe in connection with these new germ researches of mine. Ali, this is really a wonderful bit of luck — some people would call it distinctly providential. The very thing we wanted to see. A case of collapse in lodging-house fever." They went to work speedily with the usual precautions, and soon had settled the unconscious patient fairly in her bed. She was, indeed, a loathsome object now to look upon — her livid face all scarred with wounds and covered with bandages, her swollen eyelids white and puflFy, her thick lips almost black with congestion, and her breath coming and going from her heaving chest with stertorous distinctness. It needed all a doctor's resolution and experience to make any man handle gently Buch a hideous caricature of feminine humanity. ** She's the very case I wanted," Harry Chichele murmured to Ali again, as they finished their task and paused for a moment. '* As soon as she's dead, she'll give me the exact opportunity needed to complete the outline of my new theory. " " But suppose she doesn't die, though ? " Mohammad Ali put iu with malicious dryness. Harry Chichele looked up at him sharply. ** But she wiU die," he answered, in a short, quick, decisive tone. "There's no * suppose' at at all about the matter. When a patient reaches such a stage as this, the thing's as good as settled already. Miracles are out of date nowa- days. The onlv question is, which cause will she die of — accident or the fever. I inall hold the post-mortem myself at ten to-morrow. Nurse, whatever hour of day or night this case goes off, send down %i once, please, and have me knocked up to certify cause of death imme^i- tarn DSYiL'i D1& §5 ' CHAPTER Xt It was long past twelve when Harry Chichele lounged down to the big front door of the Middlesex Hospital to see Mohammad AH safely off the premises. On t'lie stone stops, an altercation was in full progress, in loud tones, between the stout porter and a bundle of rags that lay in a huddled heap beside the portico pillars. '*Git up, will you, and go oflf 'ome," the porter exclaimed in his angriest voice. " You ain't no call to go sleepin* 'ere. If you don't git, out, I'll whistle for the police for you." The bundle of rags moaned piteously. *' I ain't got no 'oma to go to now," it replied in childish misery. *' Father, he's run in, and took ofl to the lock-up for murderin' mother ; an* mother she's inside 'ere where they've took *er, a-dying in the 'ospital." "That ain't no business of mine, I tell you," the stout porter rejoined, with official dignity. " If you ain't got no 'ome to go to, why, then apply to the parochial authorities for relief — git took into the union, you know — but don't go incommodin' the committee an' the public by sleepin' out on the steps of the 'ospital." Harry Chichele ran down bareheaded to inspect the poor little terri- fied morsel of humanity. He raised up the bundle of rags in his hands with gentle forbearance and an entire absence of that involuntary ap- pearance of disgust which most of us display, almost by instinct, towards very dirty and tattered children. Old experience in a London hospital had taught him long since to accept dirt in a philosophical spiiit as a natural concomitant of the residuum of our species. He clasped the poor thin little hand good-naturedly in his own, and asked tho small outcast in a quiet soothing voice where she lived and what she wanted. '* I don't live nowheres," the child answered, *' and I want mother." Harry Chichele looked more closely at the girl's head. " Why, goodness gracious," he said in a shocked tone, ** what's this ? You've got a bad wound on it, little woman — a wound that ought to be dressed at once. The idea of your exposing yourself on a night like this to the open air with such a wound as that upon you 1 Why, it's enough to kill you outright. Come in at once, there's a good girl, and let's see what we can do for you." Surprised at the unexpected kindness of his manner, Lizbeth fol- lowed him, nothing loth, up the big steps, and through the lighted corridor, into Harry Chichele's own cosy and comfortable sitting-room. *' Are you hungry, little one I " Harry asked going straight to the point with tho first great need of starving humanity. The gluld nodded an eager tkMout. ifu Ixod hit the bull's-^ye. Sht 66 THE devil's mm, was far too frightened by the light and glare to open her lips, but she understood at once that a rare prospect of food loomed visibly in the middle distance. " Sit down, my child," Harry said, pushing her a chair beside the centre table, with a kindly gesture. The girl seated herself with silent awe upon the extreme edge. Harry went over to the cheffonier in the corner, and brought out, one after another, a cold tongue, a box of biscuits, a cut sponge cake, and some apricot jam. Lizbeth's eyes glittered strangely. Harry had seen the same sort of glitter before. He knew where. In the eyes of the greater carnivores at the Zoo, when their daily dole of meat is being served out to them. He cut her a slice or two of the tongue, laid it on a plate, and gave it to the child with a knife and fork. She took them up so awkwardly, and with such evident doubt, that Harry saw at once she had never handled those dangerous implements of advanced civilization in her life before. " I've no bread in the house," he said apologetically, '*boI must ask you kind'y to put up with biscuits," and as he spoke he handed her a couple. The child stuflfed one into her mouth whole, with a huge piece of tongue to keep it company, and appeared for the moment absolutely lost in supreme and unutterable ectasies of happiness. She ate a supper that fully satisfied Harry Chichele's benevolent intentions, from tongue and biscuits to sponge cake and apricot jam ; and when she had quite finished, he sat her in a chair beside the blazing hearth, and examined the wound on her head with closer attention. After a short examination, he rang the bell. " Send a nurse here," he said to the sen'ant. The nurse came with the promptitude of a big organization. "Nurse," Harry Chichele began, " I want you to take this poor little thing away and cut her hair off. Cut it all off quite close to the head, and give her a bath, and then — well, then, what can we do for her ? We can't put her back into her rags again, can we ? " •* Is she a patient, doctor ?" the nurse inquired. "No," Harry Chichele answered promptly. *' She'^s here as my friend. 1 want to see to the wound on her head privately. Could you get anything in the way of clothes to rig her up in ? " " I've no doubt we could borrow some," the nurse replied with official coolness. " Come along with me, child. We'll do our best for her." Lizbeth loitered as if loth to go. ** Where's mother ?" she asked at last, beginning to sob again with the fresh strength the unwonted food and drink had given her. ' ' I want to ^o and see mother." "Is your mother's name Sarah Wilcox 1" Harry asked, sympa- thetically. ' * Yes," the child answered, beginning to cry. " Leastways, it's Sal, an' Mrs. Wilcox." *' Well, your mother's upstairs, then," Harry replied with soothing calmness. "She's under my care, and I'm the doctor of this hospital. Bhe'i been put to bed in a nice warm cot^ and her woundi have been THB DETIL'8 filB. 57 dressecl, and she's fear* investigate, she must go and rally, to spite scientific medicine. A wretched, animated gin-bottle like that I What possible good can she be to the world, I wonder, except, indeed, to experiment upon ? Talk about the corpus mZe, forsooth 1 What corpus villus could you get than her miserable carcase ? " And he went downstairs muttering to himself in righteous indignation against the unhappy being, because she wouldn't die fast enough at the right moment, to oblige science. *' Your mother's better," he said to Lizbeth, with a pleasant smile, aa he reached his own room. *' A nurse will take you up presently to Me her. How's the poor head this morning ? Ah, that's well 1 Filming over nicely. Wonderful recuperative power in the family, evidently. How did you get it ? Father again ? Was he practising gymnastics on you, too, my friend, with his empty gin-bottle ? " The child hesitated. *' N — no," she said. " It wasn't him ; it was mother as done it. She took the ink-bottle and thro wed it at my 'ead. But it wasn't no fault of her'n, poor deur. She was angry with me, acoz I didn't git her the gin quick enough when she wanted it." Harry set his lips firm. "The old fiend 1 " he muttered shortly to himself. "She looks as if she was every inch capable of it. A creature like that to block the way of science 1 It's too absurd I The world would be more than well rid of her I And yet, a ridiculous Puritanical law " He paused significantly. *' Well, well Lizbeth," he went on, after a minute's reflection, *' you can ring the bell now, if you like, for nurse to take you up to see to mother." It was ten minutes to ten by the hospital clock when Mohammad Ali knocked at the door, and entered the room, smiling and business* like. *' Why, Ali, you're early," her friend cried, surprised at his appear- ance. '* Oh yes, I'm early," Ali answered unabashed, with a quiet smile. " The pursuit of science has roused me betimes from my virtuous couch at the hotel round the corner. I've come round early to see the theory justified. You mentioned ten sharp, I think, for the post- mortem. " Chichele's face fell abruptly. He was in no humour just then for professional chaflF. The incredible perversity of Sarah Wilcox in per- sisting to live against all medical advice and prevision, had somewhat ruffled his usual repose. "I did," he replied, with sardonic irony; " but an unexpected hitch has meanwhile arisen. The subject obstin- ately declines to put herself in a proper position for the furtherance of scientific investigation. I regret to say she's positively and absurdly better this morning." *' I thought as much," Mohammad Ali answered, with that annoying amile of his — a most unsympathetic man at times, Mohammad Ali. ** She looked a particular tough subject, I fancied. It takes a great deyil'b die. 09 deal to kill these tough subjects of the lowest social strata. The germs and they have a hard tussle over it. So she's better, is she ? Well, well, that's well. The first business of medical science is to prolong life." " Ali, if you fling your miserable little moral platitudes of the pro- fession at my head this morning, I will arise and slay you with my hands, as King Arthur observed on a critical occasion to the bold Sir Bedivere. But why prolong a life of abject misery ? Why prolong a life that's of no sort of use, or good, or advantage, to itself or anybody else that comes across it ? For my own part, I don't mind candidly con- fessing to you that I don't want this tough subject to go on living any longer. A miserable, bloated, drunken creature, who stupefies herself with gin, and mauls her husband, and makes her abject little child's life utterly unhappy by her gross cruelty. Why, it was she who scalped the poor girl's temple. You should juat see the wound — a raw place as big as the palm of my hand — grazed with the sharp edge of an earthern ink-bottle. Pah ! it's just sickening to think of it 1 The squalid abomination, cutting open her own child's head with a savage blow like that. It makes me angry even to realize that such things can be in this nineteenth century England of ours." Mohammad Ali bowed his head. ** England is perhaps not absolutely perfect," he admitted candidly. "And then to think," Harry Chichele continued, bridling up with genuine enthusiasm, " of all the good that would result to the world from the establishraeut of my theory 1 The valuable lives that would be saved for humanity ! The wrenches that would be spared to parents and children ? The hold we should gain over epidemic diseases 1 Why, our entire principles and practice of hygiene would be revolutionized offhand. Fever would be banished, cholera dispelled, diphtheria and scarlatina held at arm's length 1 Earth would become a really habitable planet, and the triumphant germ who now walks up and down this oblate spheroid of ours like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, would have his fangs drawn and his claws pared by the calm, cool, dispassionate prevision of prophylactic science I All these good things would come to mankind — and I should be able to marry Olweu Tregellas ! But no 1 That bloated, pasty-faced drunken old reprobate, lying in bed in her sins upstairs there, stops the way for all future pro- gress ! Why, a woman with a conscience would die to order under such circumstances ; but creatures like that have nine lives and no con- science. I hope to goodness she's arrived at the ninth and last of hen by thiatimel" 60 VHl DlTXL'l DI« CHAPTER Xn. That long day IJirough, the woman Wilcox dragged on dubiously^ hanging by a slender thread the whole time between life and death, but never dying — as in reason she ought to have done. From time to time Harry Chiehele ran upstairs and watched her, while Muhammad All hung about the hospital (where he was weli known of old) "to see fair between science and the patient," as he himself quaintly phrased it. About three in the afternoon the house-surgeon asked them to step round with him to the neghbouring police-court, where he had to give evidence in the case of assault against the woman's husband. Harry dropped in and listened to the hearing, his little charge, in her quaint rig-out, being naturally one of the principal witnesses. As her acquain- ance with the nature of an oath seemed evidently both profound and exhaustive, her testimony was, of course, received as indubitably valid. The man Wilcox — fish merchant, of Little VValpole Street, Marylebone, he called himself on the charge-sheet — was charged for the present with aggravated assault ; but the police intimated, in their cautious way, that the case might turn out, " with eventualities," to widen out into one of wilful murder. Such a picturesque collection of ragged and unwashed brutality as the lodging-house witnesses, Harry had never before beheld ; nor did the personal appearance of the prisoner, William Wilcox himself, fish-merchant, of Little Walpole Street, prepossess him largely in favour of his doubtful patient at the Middlesex Hospital. The accused fish-merchant was most undeniably fishy. A more unmiti- gated ruffian of his own type it would have been hard to find outside Newgate, and Harry Chiehele thought in his own soul that if the world could be well rid of the entire precious pair of them at once, the world, on the whole, might rather be congratulated than otherwise on the salutary process. '* What will become of the child?" the magistrate asked with some interest, after remanding the prisoner. * ' A bright girl, and gave her important evidence well and clearly." *'For the present," Harry said, laying his kindly hand upon the child's head, *' I undertake to look after her. What we shall do with her in the end must depend, of course, upon the eventualities." The magistrate smiled. The court smiled. Bill himself smiled most prodigiously. Eventualities is such a very fine word to describe the chance of your getting hanged or not. Even though the odds were heavy on hanging. Bill would have his smile over it, with the rest of the w orld, like a courteous gentleman. As the afternoon wore away, however, and the critical period of the disease seemed to be passing by, without the woman getting noticeably irorse, or noticeably better for that matter, either, Harry Chichelf THE devil's DIB. 61 began to reason with himself on the chance of death quite seriously. What was this wretclied woman's life worth, compared with the uni- versal good and benefit of the whole world — with hia own and Olwen Tregellas's happiness ? How foolish to believe one might lawfully kill an open foe, but not get rid, when occasion demanded, of these morbid excrescences, these tumours and cancers, upon the very fabric and organism of society 1 No, no ; the thing was as clear as day. It was expedient that tliis one sordid life should be offered up on the altar of society — and of the new germ theory. For his own sake, Harry Chichele would not have entertained the notion, perhaps, nor even for society's. Society, no doubt, at the cost of some thousand valuable lives or so, could still wait a month or two longer ; for society, you see, has waited so long, and is, after all, such a pure abstraction. But for Olwen's — for Olwen's ! He stood trem- bling now on the very verge of a great, a glorious, and an epoch-making discovery. If he completed it at once, well and good. Olwen's future would be amply secured to her. But if he didn't, some obscure German or other, in some out-of-the-way university laboratory among the wilds of Saxony, might get wind of it and be beforehand with him, and prove his discovery a week earlier than he himself had succeeded in proving it. These obscure Germans are always anticipating our best ideas in their cold-blooded, grasping, Teutonic fashion. And then, there would be an end at once of his splendid dream of fame and competence. Olwen would never be Lady Chichele. Yes, yes, there was no denying it, the woman must go ; humanity and science, and Olwen's future, all alike imperatively demanded it. But how ? That was the question. Pooh 1 as he himself had said last night in passing, to Mohammad Ali, if you really want to get rid of anybody, there are a thousand ways — physiological ways and patho- logical ways — in which a competent medical man can dexterously remove an obnoxious person without for one moment arousing undue suspicion. What ways ? Oh, easy enough 1 The first thing is to make up your mind. That done, the rest all comes as pat as the alphabet. The real question was now, did he or did he not mean to do it ? So Harry ruminated, sometimes stretched back in his easy-chair, sometimes pacing up and down his room now and again, and surprising little Lizbeth with his deep-drawn breaths, as she sat at the table, quiet as a mouse, looking over the big bundle of children's picture-books, that Harry had borrowed from one of the nurses for her amusement. Up and down the room he paced, t^me after time, absorbed in thought, and paused at last with knitted brows before Olwen Tregellas's photo- graph. His stern set lips relaxed at onco at the sight. It was a pretty photograph, but it didn't do that sweet face full justice. Nothing on earth could do dear Olwen justice, not even Ivan Royle's delicious half-length port'-iit. Yet what could be lovelier, after all, than the delicate half-unconacious smile upon those parted lips ? so pure, so maidenly, so iii.iucent, bo charming 1 Harry's whole soul went out vith a sigh to that treasured photograph. He loml her t He lov94 6S THE devil's DIB. her i She must be his I She shovld be his ! He would make her hia own I She should live yet to be Lady Chichele 1 That object upstairs stand for one moment in his angel's way I Heaven forbid ! Never 1 never 1 — ten thousand times never I If the creature had as many lives as the sands on the shore, there should never a life of them stand in the way for Olwen 1 for Olwen 1 — for his own bright, beautiful, innocent Olwen ! When he turned away from that smiling photograph of the simple, pretty, tender-hearted Cornish girl, Sarah Wilcox's fate was sealed irrevocably— as irrevocably as if sentence of death had been pronounced against her in due form by the highest tribunal in this realm of Eng- land. " Bing the bell, little woman, will you ? " he said with his winning voice softly to Lizbeth. *' I want to ask nurse something about your mother." A servant answered the bell immediately. " Will you kindly ask the nurse in the fever ward," Harry Chichele said in his politest man- ner, " when Sarah Wilcox's poultices will next be changed ? " The man came back again in two minutes. *' At halt-past six, sir," he said briefly. Harry Chichele nodded a satisfied nod. " Good," he answered ; **■ that will do perfectly. Please get me a basket from the porter, Thomas." When the basket arrived, Harry looked across with a pleasant smile to Lizbeth. ** My child," he said kindly, " I'm going out now on an errand for five minutes. I have to get something from the chemist for your mother. You can amuse yourself while I'm away, I suppose, with all these toys and picture-books and things ? " Lizbeth looked up at him with a puzzled smile. " I never was so 'appy in all my born days afore," she said simply. " I think you're^the kindest gentleman as ever lived. I'd like to stop 'ere for dver and ever." Harry nodded his genuine pleasure at her words, and left the room abruptly. He walked along the street with his even pace to the nearest chemist's, where he bought a couple of waterproof India-rubber bags, such as are commonly used for putting sponges in ; one of the very largest size, the other about half an inch smaller. Then he strolled quietly on to the fishmonger's and bought a couple of pounds of ice, which he put inside the larger bag, and carried home to his own rooms in the basket. They had always plenty of ice and fo spare at the hospital, but Harry didn't care to ask for any just then. In these little matters, it is best, as far as possible, to avoid exciting attention or arousing suspicion. What can a man want with ice in his own rooms on a chilly, damp November evening ? He quoted to himself the *' Bab Ballads : " " The novelty would striking be, and must excite remark." To excite remark was just what he wished to avoid ; he must manage this little affair for himself in the strictest secrecy. When he got home again, he carried the basket into his own bedroom, and proceeded noiselessly to crush the ice small with a pestle and THE devil's DIB. 6S mortar. As soon as he had crushed it to the prope? *^/e, he put it intc the larger India-rubber bag, and laid the smaller ^-^« loose within it. Then he sowed them both together at the top, lo that the whole arrangement made a dry double waterproof ice bag " ^ith the ice inside), into which a man could thrust his hand and keep ft stone cold as long as he wanted, without its getting vret or otherwisb Attracting attention. That done, he rolled the entire apparatus up in th^ blanket on his own bed, and went out once more into the warm sitting-room. Lizbeth noticed, wiien he came back, that he had changed his coat. He was now wearing his loose brown velveteen jacket, with very wide and capacious side pockets. In the sitting-room he sat down to his Davenport at once, and, find- ing he had still ten minutes to spare, filled up the time by continuing his half-written letter to Olwen, which he had interrupted when he first began to think over this little scheme for — well, for aiding and abetting Nature in getting rid of that miserable, bloated, drunken object. "And then, my own heart's darling," he was writing hastily, **I shall be able at last, more truly than ever, to call you in very truth my own. Of course you are my own, my very own, already, I know ; my own in heart and thought and feeling ; my own in every inmost thrill of your nature ; but I want you to be still more intimately mine ; to live with you and watch you all day long ; to do my best to make you happy ; to let your life ennoble mine, to let my life strengthen and enrich yours ; as every true and perfect union — man's and woman's — ought mutually to do. Oh, Olwen, my darling, my own dearest one, I wish I could tell you how every hour of the day " At that exact moment the muflBed hospital clock struck slowly the single note of half-past six. That dull sound recalled Harry to himself with a start. He replaced the letter instantly in the desk, locked the lid down, and hurried oflF at once into his own bedroom. When he emerged, his right hand was plunged deep in his coat pocket, and a resolute smile played ominously about the firm-set corners of his thin pale lips. In the fever ward above, Mohammad Ali, the nurse, and the house- surgeon were all waiting for him by the patient's bedside. Sarah Wil- cox lay half insensible on her narrow cot with rolling eyes, that showed the whites and part of the iris ; and her breathing was still loud and stertorous. " We must be very careful," the house-surgeon said as Hj^rry approached. '* Life and death hang upon it, you see, both for the woman herself and for her husband too. The slightest chill would instantly kill her, I think. What do you say, eh, Chichele ? " " Wants great care," Harry answered, in a slow delibaiate tone, inspecting her closely. '* Come round here, Ali. You stand over at the side and help me. I'll support her back while nurse gets ready the i flannel bandage. Now, nurse, quick ! Have the things handy. Don't lose a minute 1 A chill may be fatal 1 " j ^ "Are your hands warm ?" Mohammad Ali askod suspiciously, with his oriental quickness. Harry held out his left with the utmost frank- ness for his friend to feel. Ali clasped it in his, and nodded satisfiecU di tfiB DBTIL^S Dtfe. It was warm as a toftjt. The right hand lay still in the right-haud pocket — buried deep in the stone-cold ice-bag. Mohammad Ali, witii all his sharpness, didn't think or ask to feel that one. *' Take off the poultice I " Hariy said shortly. The nurse removed it. Harry withdrew his right hand at once from the bag, and supported the woman with his broad palm on the small of her back. A cold shudder seemed to run like lightning through the wretched creature's spine. She opened her eyes and gasped for breath. For a second some mumbling word appeared to tremble inaudibly on her bloated lips. It was a hideous oath — an oath of the foulest and vulgarest profanity. She couldn't utter it — her strength was too low — but the house-surgeon, eyeing her sternly, on her quivering mouth ■aw her frame it visibly with a final effort, and shuddered his unaffected disgust. *' She's a bad lot," he muttered, relaxing his hold. "Even at this last moment, Ghichele, she's flinging horrible filthy oaths and names at us." Harry Ghichele smiled contented. That vile end justified to himself hia own action. Who could care to save such a woman as that? Surely the world would be well rid of her. They bound up the bandage and laid her down with care on the bed once more. Th<^ cold tremors still coursed convulsively down the crea- ture's back. Harry regarded her awhile with close attention. *' She won't pull through," he said. '* She's too far gone. There's no chance now of her living till morning." Mohammad Ali shook his head. '* I can't understand it at all," he answered moodily. *' Half an hour ago she seemed as if she were really rallying. Now ohe'a going off with startling rapidity." Harry smiled again, a calm wise smile, and went downstairs to hk own room. It was more seemly so. Indecent anxiety would too readily betray itself. He would wait below for final news to be brought from the fever ward. In one more day the theoiy would be vindicated. He didn't feel like a would-be murderer. He didn't consider himself in that light at all. People were always dying in the hospital ; some- times unavoidably, sometimes from the result of operations or from the carelessness or stupidity of nurses. One more death among so many mattered but little. It merely went in with the general average. Half an hour passed slowly by upstairs, and the house-surgeon still watched with patient eyes the last struggles of the dying woman. Mohammad Ali stood by his side. *'It's very odd," he whispered. " I can see what's happened, but I can't in the least aooount for it. We were careful to the last degree, yet some sudden chill must have congested the kidneys." As he spoke the woman lifted her hand uneasily from the bed. She was groping about now as if feeling for something. Her fingers fumbled with the folds of the bedclothes. Presently, she raised her head a little, '* Gin 1 " she cried in an audible voice, opening her eyes in one last flickering rally. " Gim'me some gin, gim'me some gin, you beggar ! " A.nd then, with a sudden ghastly collapse, she f«U badk ■peacb.i^v a the hospital pillow. THI DBYIL'B DIS. 65 The nurse looked hard at her and nodded to the surgeon. The sur- geon answered in his stereotyped voice, **Go down and tell Dr. Chichele," Tliey were all so accustomed to strange deaths in that huuse of mercy that even this horrible one did not greatly aflFect them. Harry Chichele was seated comfortably by his own table, giving Lia- beth a first lesson in the mysteries of backgammon, when Mohammad Ali and the nurse entered. " Sixes," he cried gaily, as the child threw. *' You take those four times, you see, because it's a doublet. That's a good throw, Lizbeth ; a capital throw. I couldn't have done it better myself. I believe you'll beat me after all, little woman. You're getting on famously. You'll make a first-rate backgammon player." *' Doctor," the nurse said, opening the door, without one word of preface or warning, " Sarah Wilcox is just dead. You said you wished to be told of it the moment it happened." Harry Chichele's hand was upon Lizbeth's backgammon men, show- in<; her how to take her doublets to the best advantage ; and he would have gone on to make the four movctf for her, in spite of the nurse's startling intelligence (as Mohammad Ali noticed from behind his keen quick eye) had he not been interrupted even as she spoke by a terrible, heartrending outburst of grief from poor, orphaned, and lonely little Lizbeth. She cried once, and then was silent. It was, indeed, a piercing and agonized cry — the short sharp wail of a broken heart that has lost its all at a single venture. Next moment the child threw back her head and stifi[ened her limbs. Her whole body grew stark and rigid. Her upturned eyes gleamed dull and deathlike. For a second she seemed almost as if really dead, so cold and stififand motionless she lay, with her neck flung back, and her breath held long in deep uncon> ■oiousness. Harry Chichele seized her tenderly in his arms, as a man might seize his own daughter. " Brandy ! " he whispered quietly to Mohammad Ali. " Fan her, nurse I Fresh air I Fresh air 1 Fresh air ! Don't crowd about her 1 Give her room k) breathe I Poor little thing ! poor httle thing I What a soft little soul she must have, after all f Who would ever have thought she'd take it to heart like that ? A miserable wretch of a woman such as her mother ! Not fit to be mother to any living human creature 1 " The child opened her eyes vaguely. " She was all the mother I 'ad," she muttered to herself in a alow deep voice, and then relapsed onM ^ more into perfect rigidity. ~^ 61 THE DEVIL'S DIB. CHAPTER XIII. Mohammad Au was right when he declared that Harry Chichele wai by no means cruel or unfeeling in the grain. As the keen-eyed Moslem watched the Englishman assiduously nursing that poor motherless help- less little waif the evening through, with unceasing tendernoss, he could not but think more than once to himself, " After all, my suspicions must have been ill-founded, and Harry's really a thorough good fellow in spite of everything." Could he still continue to believe him stern and hard-hearted ? Could he hesitate to entrust even Olwen's happiness to a man who could lavish such gentle and patient excess of care upon a mere ragged small London outcast ? Surely, surely, ho must have been mistaken in his first estimate of the man's character. For Harry undressed the child and laid her to rest with gentle arms in hifl own bed. The sofa would do well enough for himself to-night, he said. He sat beside her and held her thin small hand softly in his own; he put eau-de-Cologne upon her poor hot forehead ; he fed her himself from a spoon with beef-tea, and milk-food, and essence, and jelly, as he had fed Ivan Royle, a couple of months before, away down at Pol- perran. He was all kindness and goodness and professional gentleness — the very embodiment of the ideal doctor. Could Harry have done all this if he had really and truly — as AH somehow vacruely suspected — in some way or other shortened the life of Lizbeth's miserable drunken mother. Ali was inclined at first sight to answer, No. The paradox seemed almost incredible. No man could so completely possess two natures. And yet, was it really two natures after all ? What more conceivable than that a person should be tender, sympathetic, lovable, gentle, should loathe cruelty or unnecessary pain, and yet should be absolutely devoid of any regard for the sanctity of human life as such ; should sacrifice it as ruthlessly, when occasion demanded, as he sacrificed the rabbits, and cats, and pigeons he used in his frequent physiological ex- experiments ? Such a character was at least possible. And then, with a sudden and ghastly distinctness, there rose onco •j ore, in vivid colours, before his mind's eye, a terrible picture — the picture of Begum Johanna of Deoband, Harry Chichele's ancestress in the fourth degree, lying on her bed with a smile on her lips, above the starving slave-giil's living tomb — and with a flash the riddle seemed easy indeed to ^olve. The man was a complex of jarring elements. On the one side, the sensitiveness, the delicacy, the refinement, the sympathy of European moral ideas ; on the other side, the unscrupu- lousness, the treachery, the suppressed and concealed but ever-presenl cruelty of the Hindoo native. Of such strnnge components, in varying^ proportions, was Harry Chichele's character ultimately built up. WbAt THE deyil's die. 67 wonder he should be as Ali knew him ? Under ordinary circumstan- ees, BO Ali thought, the Englishman on the whole preponderated ; but on certain occasions, when things so willed it, the nature and instincts of Begum Johanna came out strong in him ; and the moment of the woman's death, Ali believed, was one of these worst and more awful moments. He had little time however for speculating on his friend's psychology, for the next few days were full and busy ones for both Harry and AU. Lizbeth, indeed, shortly began to mend, and as she did so her dog-like love for her wretched drunken mother, the one being she had ever known round whom the tendrils of her poor small heart could timidly twine themselves, seemed all to turn vicariously, with sudden energy, upon her new protector, Harry Chichele. He had been kind to mother — that was her one great thought ; he had taken her in and cared for her at the hospital ; he had tried to euro her though he hadn't succeeded ; he had done his best at the end for mother. The child's gratitude was almost painfully fervid. It burnt with a clear and bright light in her very face. Such a misplaced feeling would have smitten a weaker man than Harry Chichele with profound remorse. But Harry, like the strong sinner that he was, accepted it all with good-humoured amuse- ment as a tribute due to him. She was a poor, miserable, houseless, little stray, he said, laughingly ; and as she was good enough to hon- our him with her friendly confidence, she should never have any cause to regret it. If Bill was unfortunately hanged — which little accident must not happen, if possible, for the woman had died distinctly of the fever, not of the assault — why, then, he would take over Lizbeth him- self without consulting her natural guardian, the parish. If, on the other hand. Bill wasn't hanged, which happy consummation we must all strive to our utmost to bring about, why, in that case, doubtless, Bill could be persuaded by a solid solatium in coin of the realm (not exceed- ing forty shillings) to forego his pro^)und parental feelings, and to make over Lizbeth in perpetuity to the care and guardianship of her present protector. So all would come out right in the end. Nothing could be simpler, easier or more perfectly satisfactory. Not that the young doctor proposed to adopt Lizbeth ; Harry Chich- ele had no such quixotic notions in his head as that. He would bring up the girl as a servant about the house, and perhaps in time, when she was old enough and wise enough, train her as a nurse under his own eye here at the hospital. She would be well provided for, but only as an act of pure generosity. He owed her nothing and he would pay her handsomely. But there were many other things at the same time to occupy Harry Chichele's more serious attention. First of all, there was the inquest, and then there was the important question of the germs. As the even- tualities would have it, of course, an inquest was necessjiry ; and though Harry and the surgeon gave their evidence strongly in favour of death being due to fever alone, the coroner's jury, exercisinuf its undoubted and cherished British privilege of setting aside cavalierly the opinion of the experts, and much moved by Lizbeth's graphio 68 THi dbyil's dii. description of the scene in the attic, which she reproduced with tneat« rical fidelity, 'jrought in a verdict of wilful murder against William Wilcox, fish uierchant, of Little Walpole Street, Marylebone, the hus- band of the decea ed. Little lazbeth was absolutely in her element in giving evidence, which she gave with a will against her drunken father. " 'E come in an' 'e says, Til murder yer,' says 'e," the child deposed with such dramatic force, assuming the very tone and accent of the placidly smiling prisoner. " 'I'll do for you,' says 'e. *You see if I don't ; you tarmagan. I'll teach yer to 'urt 'er. You're a beauty, you are. I'll swing for you Sal,' says *e, 'I'll smash you; 1*11 murder you.' An' then 'e up with the bottle, and bangs it down like this — so ; an' bashes in 'er head with a great blow ; and the poor dear just lays 'erself back an' done this way ; an' the blood come a' spurting out of 'er poor cut face ; an' 'e stands up and he smiles, an* 'e smiles, an* 'e sticks 'is 'ands a-smiling in 'is pockets, an' *e never takes no more notice or nothink. An' there 'e is, just as you sees 'im." No wonder a susceptible British jury, moved by this clear testimony to the prisoner's deliberate determination to kill his wife, should bring in a verdict of wilful murder. Nevertheless, the verdict somewhat astonished and perturbed Harry Ohichele ; and Mohammad Ali noticed, with a deepening sense of uncomfortable suspicion against his English friend, that Harry was evi- dently uneasy in his own mind about it, as if he himself were in some way responsible for the eventuality. "It doesn't much matter, you know," he said apologetically more than once, in an awkward, shuffling way to Ali. " Coroner's juries always do prejudge a case against the suspected person. But it doesn't matter : the jury at the trial '11 set all that p«rfectly right. It'll take a more serious view of its responsi- bilities than a mere amateurish inefiective body like a coroner's jury." *'The palladium of British liberty is always absurdly emotional," Mohammad Ali answered, watching the efi'ect of his words upon his hearer intently with his usual oriental keenness of observation. "I shouldn't be surprised for my part if they convicted the man, merely on the strength of the girl's evidence. It's a fine sensational scene, as she describes it — the fellow smashing in the sick wife's head with the empty gin bottle — and it loses nothing from that queer little imp's straightforward small mouth and theatrical manner. She'll produce an eflfect, I'll bet you a quid, upon any jury in all England." Harry's face grew white and pasty. " Pooh, pooh 1 " he said. " The trial '11 be a pure formality. Judges are always sen&ible men. They're not carried away by m.ere emotion, like coroner's juries. They take care that due importance shall be attached to technical and scientific evidence. Juries always find in these cases according as the judges ■um up. The man '11 get off on the capital charge, I don't doubt, though he'll receive what he deserves — six months in prison — for the assault and battery. Nevertheless, in spite of all his airy protestations, Mohammad Ali could see clearly by the frequency with which ho reverted to the sub- ject, that Harry was by no means easy about it in bis own mind, and THS devil's DIB. 69 that his conscience pricked him, not indeed for accelerating the woman's death (if, as Ali more and more definitely began to suspect, he had in fact somehow accelerated it), but for helping to let unjust suspicion fall upon that worthless and abject creature, her husband. However, being happily for himself a person of varied and many- sided interests, not apt to be wholly preoccupied by such small matters as the ultimate results of his own little action, Harry let the question lie by for the present, and occupied himself for the moat part, mean- while, with his investigation into the ultimate nature of the lodging- house fever germs. At this congenial task he worked hard with his microscope in all hia leisure hours, developing and observing those precious germs — the germs that had cost that miserable wonian Wilcox the tag end of her unhappy and useless existence. He was greatly excited about the result — more excited, Mohammad Ali acutely observed, than even the intrinsic importance of the subject to science and himself could well account for. Mohammad Ali had a certain vague and unfounded sus- picion floating through his brain that Harry, in fact, wanted the germs to justify his action — wanted them to yield an adequate result in order that he might not feel to himself he had wasted his crime all for nothing. When you so far depart from conventional morality as to kill somebody for an experimental purpose, you would at least like your costly experiment to turn out successful, rather than to end in a wretched fiasco. As the investigation drew towards its close, Harry's excitement be- came almost painfully intense. He sat patiently for hours at a time with his eye at his microscope, never withdrawing it for a single second, and feeding himself through a tube with beef-tea, waiting to see the germs in their new "culture liquid" — the artificial medium in which he had placed them to aid their development — assume that jointed necklace-like co .iditioii which was the essential point for the proof of his new theory. If only that one last link in the chain of evidence could be supplied — if only segnientation would take place in the way he expected, the tiieory would have become a triumphant success, and he, Harry Chichele, would be the greatest discoverer in medical science since the days of Jenner and vaccination. How small a matter, comparatively, was the death of that bloated drunken being 1 IIo saw it all floating vaguely before his own mind, this vast future that awaited his grasp, this glorious destiny laid up beforehand by fate f"i' himself — and Olwen. Nothing like it, he fancied in his heated iinayination, had ever yet been done in modern medicine. Harvey's tliscovery of the circulation of the blood, Hunter's magnificent anato- mical demonstrations, Sydenham's improvements in sanitary regimen — what were they all beside this fundamental question of the utter staujp- ing out of infectious diseaso--the anniliilation of fevers and smallpox »nd cholera 1 It was the beginning of a great sanitary millennium. He saw, in his waking vision, a Chichele society founded at Burlington Bouse for the study and development of the new medical principles. 70 THB DSTIL'B DIB. He «aw a Chichele statue duly adorning the imposing front of ita splendid edifice. He saw himself president of the College of Physicians, receiving distinguished visitors in his chair of office. And through the fabric of his day-dream, thus dancing visibly before his heated brain, as he pored for hours together, ceaselessly through the microscope, Olwen'a graceful little figure flitted ever like a beautiful phantom, hallowing and consecrating the vei*y crime by which he had made it all possible. He loved her now profoundly and unspeakably — for had he not dared, for her sake, the utterly unspeakable ? Then, again, as he sat in this heroic mood, waiting and watching, waiting and watching, waiting and watching for the final result, and just supporting himself on beef- tea and brandy, which Ali supplied him, sucked through the tube, at times a terrible wave of reaction would come slowly over him, and he would begin to fear, with a certain awful sinking terror, that the things were never going to segment at all, and that his glorious theory, from which he had hoped and expected so much, for which he had faced such horrible possibilities, was going to turn out in the end a dismal failure, and disappoint him utterly of his legitimate triumph. At such times his heart failed fearfully within him, and a gnawing horror, that was not remorse, nor yet repentance, but rather a mere wearied and sickening sense of futile criminality, took possession throughout of his nerves and muscles. He could hardly hold the focussing-screws of the microscope aright for trembling ; he could hardly distinguish the dim and shadowy objects that flitted and flickered on the illuminated slide, for failure of vision to follow them properly. Hour after hour went slowly by, and still the germs showed no signs or trace of jointing or dividing. Harry's excitement grew more and more intense with every moment. Mohammad Ali watched him nar- rowly. He sat with his eye fixed hard on the eye-piece of the instru- ment, and his hand trembling with nervous agitation upon the screw that alters and varies the focus. Cold perspiration gathered in large round drops on his clammy brow. No scientific experiment was ever before watched with such profound, such intense, such absorbing interest. At last he looked up curiously at Ali. *'It would be horribly disap- pointing," he said, with some vain attempt at preserving his usual impassive scientific coolness, " if these beastly things were never to group or segment at all. One wouldn't like to think even that wretched woman's life was just simply fooled away, as it were, all for a stupid, unsuccessful experiment 1 " " One would not," Mohammad Ali answered, drily. Harry started. Their eyes met for a single second. Mohammad All's were full of meaning. Then Harry withdrew his own uneasily, with a sudden movement, and applied them once jnore, weary with watching, to that fatiguing and disappointing eye-piece. He had said too much. He had spoken out his thoughts with too frank suggestiveness. The field of the microscope grew giddy before his vacant gaze. He could hardly distinguish the tiny objects that swam so aimlessly and raguely about in it. They were swimming in cuoh enormous numbers TBB DEVIL'S DIB. 71 now — thousands and thousands of them joined together, in a sort of long-jointed beaded necklace pattern. So profound was his agitation, and so eager his desire to attain the wished-for result, that he looked at them long with vague speculation in his wearied pupils before it even began to dawn upon his dulled and numbed intelligence that this was really the very sight for which he had been so long and so ardently looking. They were segmenting ! Yes, they were segmenting 1 Great chains and strings and criss-cross rows of them, in endless array, filling uj» the entire field of vision ! A sudden thrill ran through and through hijn. It was too good to be true ; too glorious, too magnificent 1 The theory was proved 1 The germs were jointed ! He dared not believe or trust his own eyes. He dared not think they saw aright. Everything swam before them so terribly now. Per- haps it was only an optical illusion. Perhaps it was fancy, hallucination, insanity. How could he be calm at so supreme a crisis of his life as this ? Fame, reputation, Olwen's happiness, all trembled together visibly in the balance for a moment. He could not confide in his own observation for very terror. He could not hope it was really true. He called Mohammad Ali to help him look. " For Heaven's sake, come and see them, Ali," he cried. ''Am I mad, or are they really jointed ? " The Indian put his eye somewhat sceptically to the eye -piece. "Yes," he answered at last, after a long gaze, with slow deliberation. •* The theory is true. There can be no doubt at all in the world about it. The germs are lengthening out one by one into long-jointed worm- like strings. I can see them rapidly and distinctly segmenting before my own eyes this very moment." Harry sank back exhausted in a chair. *' Brandy 1 brandy I " he murmured faintly. Thank goodness, thank goodness, it was not in vain ! Then his crime had not been committed for tl pure chimera. Science was saved — and Olwen should yet be Lady Chichele. CHAPTER XIV. A PEW weeks only elapsed before the advent of that *'pu a formal- ity," William Wilcox's trial for the wilful murder of his wife Sarah. Time flies when one's going to be hanged or married. Harry Chichele spent the brief interval in preparing his paper for the Royal Society, and working up in detail his great discovery, now almost secure of a triumphant recognition. He worked it up with all his fiery energy, and in a perfect exaltation of exaggerated enthusiasm. The strange events of the last few weeks had combined to throw him into a vigorous access of feverish excite- ment. The theory possessed him heart and soul now ; he could think and talk and writ« of nothing else, even in his daily letters to Olwen. 72 THE DEVIL'S DIfi. It was to him the otle great fact of the age, the panacea for all the various ills of humanity, the vastest revolution ever yet effected in the whole course of medical science. He wrote about it in his paper with contagious zeal ; he was drunk with the imaginary grandeur and mag- nificence of his own conception. So the weeks rolled quickly and easily by till the evening before William Wilcox's trial. On that very evening he had arranged to read his paper to a crowded meeting of the Royal Society. He knew it would be crowded, for his name was already well known in scientific London, and the fiact that he had made some new observations of prime importance on the germs of cholera and other epidemic diseases had already leaked out into medical society. Besides, he had woke up and found himself famous after the episode of the Seamew. All the world had been talking about the wonderful voyage of the cholera-ship ; and he and Mohammad Ali had returned to London to discover themselves the heroes of an historical adventure. Everybody, indeed, who was anybody in the scientific world was there that night to hear him pro- pound his great theory. He went down to Burlington House enthusi- astic, well primed, and fully prepared ; he took with him his slides and his germs and his liquids and his diagrams, and he did himself, as he always did, ample justice, both in the manner and the matter of his weighty contribution. Everybody listened in attentive silence. It was an able paper, ably delivered. At the end, the men of many letters, F.R.S. and D.O.L. and Ph.D., and all the rest of them, crowded forward eagerly to see the slides he had brought down in illustration of his novel theory. There was a general buzz and hum of discussion around the microscopes. The whole world of science looked and talked and reflected and debated. A moment of terrible suspense intervened for Harry Chichele. Then the greatest physiological authority there present. Sir Roderic Brinton, bending his brows to their severest arch, and pursing his lips up with critical dignity, said abruptly to the trem- bling young man, ** I shouldn't like to commit myself too far at this early stage. Dr. Chichele, but there seems to me to be a great deal in it." At that, the storm of assent began in earnest. The world had got its cue, and, as usual, acted at once blindly upon it. Here and there, to be sure, a doubter or a scoffer held aloof conspicuously in sceptical hesitation, or assumed the favourite scientific attitude of suspended judgment through a pair of neatly-balanced and critical eye-glasses. But, on the whole, the sense of the society was evidently in favour of Harry Chichele. Germs are catching ; and as one man after another crowded up with sympathetic smile, and told him in varied language what a big thing this really was, or how important he considered the final result oi these beautiful and accurate investigations of years, Harry grew fairly intoxicated with delight at last, and longed to retire, sated and wearied, from this increasing tide of polite congratulations. The room whirled and twirled around him. It was late, however, before he could get away from the infinite hand-shakings at Burlington House ; and then Mohammad Ali bundled him somehow into a cab, THE devil's DIB. 73 and drove him off, inebriated with the subtle fumes of success, from the giddy scene of his earliest and great scientific triumph. When he reached home, he sat down the first thing, drunk with love and flattery, and wrote one line only in pencil to 01 wen. " My darling, — The meeting has gone oflF well. The germs have triumphed. The theory turns out a complete success. Even Sir Roderic gives in his adhesion, and everybody declares it a marvellous discovery. — Yours ever, H. C." Then he went to bed and lay awake the whole night through, tossing and turning, and thinking to himself of the remote results of his glor- ious theory. It was indeed a splendid and entrancing prospect. The world would now be freed from its worst terrors, and 01 wen should ride in her own carriage. Next day the inevitable reaction set in. It was the morning of Wil- liam Wilcox's trial. Harry rose fatigued from his sleepless couch, dressed himself slowly with evident carelessness, and lounged round late in a morning coat to the Central Criminal Court to answer to his subpoena. The trial was already in full swing. A fat little judge, with face hal ' buried in his ample wig, filled the bench. Twelve good men and true, of undoubted respectability, but, to guess by their looks, of most dubit- able intelligence, occupied the place usually assigned to the peers of the prisoner, empanelled by law and the sheriffs caprice to judge of the culprit's guilt or innocence. In the dock stood the amiable periwinke merchant himself, jaunty, cold-blooded, and unconcerned as usual. In his own heart, William Wilcox, fish merchant, of Little Walpole Street, Marylebone, thought himself guilty. How, indeed, could he think otherwise ? He knew he had smashed the gin-bottle across his wife's head, he knew he had made her face and neck bleed profusely, he knew she had died (presumably of the wounds) next day in the hospital ; and not being by nature given to casuistry or skilled in nice medical inquiries as to the cause of death, he had very little doubt in his own simple and vulgar mind that, as ho himself would have delicately phrased it, he must have " done for Sal" that night with the gin-bottle. Little Lizbeth, now decently clothed and in her right mind, was the first witness called for the Crown ; and the Crown, as Harry Chichole saw to his immense relief, was evidently' very lukewarm in the prosecu- tion. That impersonal entity, in fact, had made its mind up from its previous inquiries that Bill had not really murdered his wife ; and it was therefore prosecuting him chiefly for form's sake, to carry out the findingof the coroner's jury. But it didn't bolieve one bit in its own case, and it put forward its witnesses with the perfunctory formalism of an unwilling advocate. Little Lizbeth, however, soon showed that she for her part by no means coincided in the Crown's lenient view of the matter. The child was clear, emphatic, and damnatory. Judge and jury saw at once from her excited manner that Lizbeth by no means loved her father, and that she regarded him chiefly as the wicked per- lon who M brought about her mother's death. She <7as not vindiotivo, 74 THE devil's DIK. but she wag righteously indignant ; and at sight of Bill, standing there in the dock, doggedly and brutally jolly as ever, her indignation burned up bright into white heat of angry accusation. At first she could hardly be got to answer counsel's questions coherently, so firm-set was she in her one vigorous and distinct but too generalized opinion that **itwas'im as did it." After a while, however, the Crown lawyers brought her by gentle and dexterous pressure to a more tractable frame of mind, and she told her story then, though evidently much embar- rassed by the constant interruption of question and answer, with re- markable coherence, straightforwardness, and animus. So far as Bill's safety was concerned, the last point weighed at least as much against him as either of the others ; for nothing would have impressed the jury more than this evident belief in the prisoner's guilt on the part of his own orphaned and ill-treated daughter. After Lizbeth and the policemen had been duly examined, Harry Chichele was put into the box by the defendant's counsel. As his name was given, the fat little judge's round face lighted up agreeably v ith a pleasant smile of instantaneous recognition. The TimeSy in fact, had had a laudatory leader on Harry's great discovery in that morning's issue, with a full account of last night's meeting at LliC Huyal Society. Judges are even (if possible) a shade more omniscient than most other people ; and the judge observed, leaning forward towards Harry, with an appreciative smile on his broad features, that he supposed they might take it for granted Dr. Chichele was the celebrated expert in zymotic diseases, of whose ideas so much had been written of late. Harry modestly admitted the charge of having engaged in some recent re- searches on that difficult question. The jury pricked up their ears and endeavoured to assume an intelligent and attentive expression of coun- tenance, as befits twelve respectable British householders, who are about to hear, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the technical evidence of a scientific witness. As iong as the examination in chief continued, Harry Chichele got on swimmingly enough. To be sure, he asserted a little too vehemently his belief that the wounds on the face had nothing at all to do with the cause of death, and that the woman would have died all the same any- how, whether Bill had hit her with the bottle or not ; for the jury, which admired vehemence in little Lizbeth, naturally disliked it in Harry Chichele, as savouring too much of scientific arrogance. But when it came to cross-examination, counsel for the Crown, a well-known and scientific Q.C., now warming up to his work with pro- fessional interest, and seeing a chance for the favourite forensic amuse- ment of heckling and badgering a technical witness, began with a per- fect torrent of questions as to Harry Chichele's peculiar medical ideas and theories ? . ' Was he a specialist in zymotic diseases ? Harry immediately admitted, with a smile, that he waa. Was he an enthusiast as to their effect and universality t Well, yes, in a sense, he must candidly allow that be thought nmch pf their power and importance. THB devil's DIB. 75 Had he recently conducted a series of experiments npon germs derived from this very case ? He had. Was it essential to the proof of his so-called theory — with a prodigious force of sarcasm thrown into the stress laid on the word " so-called" — that the woman Wilcox should be held to have died in the last stage of collapse in lodging-house fever ? Undoubtedly it was. Had Harry stated that conviction of his own as an ascertained fact last night at a meeting of the Royal Society ? (Where, indeed, ikie distinguished Q. O had with his own ears heard him so state it). He had (somewhat nervously). The distinguished Q.C. smiled a profoundly meaning smile, and glanced, with immeasurable import in his look, at the jury. The jury, puzzled, but dimly conscious of what was expected from them, smiled back responsive, with an assumed air of the most penetrating wisdom. The judge shut his small fat eyes and ruminated inwardly. Bill, who had woke up with a start for awhile, at the first part of Harry's evidence, into a passing show of interest in the case, derived from a sudden gleam of conviction that the doctor cove was going, by some miracle or other, ** to help him out of this 'ere blooming predicament," now relapsed once more, with sullen good humour, into his primitive indifference, and gave up the case as wholly unworthy his exalted consideration. The more the Q. C. plied Harry with questions, all tending to show that he was prejudiced in favour of a belief in death from zymotic dis- eases, and against the guilt of the woman's husband, the more vehement and earnest did Harry become, and the more profoundly and unreserv- edly did the jury distrust him. At last, in answer to one of the Q.C.'s final probing questions, Harry Chichele cried out with petulant eagerness, ** The man is wholly inno- cent of this charge. To hang him for it would be nothing short of a judicial murder 1 " The judge opened his closed eyes sharoly. The jury whispered and nudged one another. The eminent Q. CT, putting his head a little on one side, with a calm, cool, malicious smile, observed in a sarcastic voice to the witness, *' You may stand down now, thank you. After that very rhetorical expression of your private opinion, there's nothing more I have to ask you." Harry Chichele stood down, flushed and indignant. Counsel for the defence, observing his condition, thought it wisest, in the prisoner's interest, not to re-examine. Indeed, the young doctor was terribly per- turbed in his soul. He knew he had managed his ev) ^ence badly. He knew he had made a mess of the business. He knew he had done more harm than good. He knew he had succeeded in prejudicing the jury against the prisoner's case. He felt his face grow hot and tiery, while those big beads still stood cold and chill on his forehead. He would have given anything to leave the court that moment, but some inexorable attraction compelled him to wait and hear the verdict. He •ould not tear himself away without it. Cost what it might, he muat 76 THE devil's Dia. B*o this thing out to the bitter end. He must know whethe*' justice f\a3 going to make him, in spite (jf himself, into a double murderer. But as he listened to Muhammad All and the house-surgeon giving their evidence with far more coolness and deliberation than he had done, his hopes began to revive once more, and the terror of that awful possibility of the verdict to be raised for awhile from his agonized con- science. For the two other medical witnesses, having no special case of conscience to guard them, could bear their testimony far more quietly and soberly in every way, and as they had also no special theory to support, it was less easy for the hostile counsel to make light of their important evidence. They both agreed with Harry that the wounds had nothing at all to do with the woman's collapse, and that the real cause of death was most undoubtedly chill and fever. The jury nodded lagaciously among themselves, and Bill once more assumed afresh some languid interest in this indifferent amusement. When all was said and done, the rotund little judge summed-up, with luminous impartiality of the familiar stereotyped non-committing character. It was not denied (with fat right-hand forefinger solemnly uplifted) that severe wounds had been inflicted by the prisoner upon the deceased with a broken gin-bottle. It was not denied (with abrupt change to the left forefinger) that deceased at the time of this murder- ous assault was already lying in a precarious condition from natural causes, with lodging-house fever. The evidence of the child (recapi- tulated at full with demonstrative quill) went far to show that the prisoner had been animated by homicidal intent, and had deliberately designed to kill his wife with his singular but extremely eflFective weapon. The only real question for their consideration was, had he or had he not succeeded in carrying his design into execution ? If they thought the wounds had accelerated death, then, and in that case, they must, of course, bring in a verdict of guilty. But if they believed the medical evidence, and if they thought death would have occurred when it did occur under any circumstances, then they must naturally find a verdict in accordance with that more lenient and merciful opinion. Of the medical witnesses. Dr. Chichele was a physician of immense and undoubted scientific attainments ; it would be for the jury to decide (with a knowing smile from the fat small eyes) how far he might have been influenced in his views on this case by his well-known and almost sentimental attachment to the zymotic diseases. The zymotic diseases, in fact, were at one and the same time his forte and his foible. Dr. Mohammad Ali, again, was a medical gentleman from Hindoostan, who had taken the oath after the fashion of his faith, on a copy of his sacred book, the Koran, and who had given his evidence, the judge must say, with great care, straight-forwardness, and fidelity. It would be for the jury, however, to decide how far he might have been influenced in his ideas on the subject by his close connection with his distinguished European colleague. Dr. Chichele. The same remark would, of course, apply, miUatis mutandis (at which the jury looked particularly clever), to the other medical witness, Mr. Macpherson, the house-surgeon of the hospital. Judicial wisdMt, adj mating its wij{, left the matter wholly ffBi dbtil's Dll. TT -J . I to the discretion of the jury, trusting that, on thione hand, they would not attribute excessive importance to the antipathies of a ohild of tender years and small experience, iior, on the other hand, attach undua weight to the emotional utterances of an amiable and accomplished professional gentleman, whose task it was to preserve life under all circumstances, and who, perhaps, might be tempted by pure goodness of heart to carry too far that natural bias into a peculiar sphare of thought and action in which it was no longer justly applicable. Primed and enlightened by this lucid statement, the jury retired to consider their verdict ; and Harry Chichele, with parched lips uid haggard eyes, broken down by the reaction after last night's unnatural triumph and exaltation, was left alone for twenty minutes in thsA crowded court with his own conscience. Two men stood there together, indeed, both equally on their trial, though not both in the same manner. The prisoner at the bar stood cool and careless, his hands in his pockets, unmoved as ever. But Harry Chichele, the true culprit, leaned for support faintly against the rail of the dock, and awaited with feverish and breathless anxiety the return of the jury. His face was pale and white as death. A terrible fixed expression sat upon his features. His eyes turned eagerly towards the door of the jury-room. An awful moment of doubt tormented him. He knew whose case was most truly in jeopardy. He could never let that unhappy man be hanged in his own place. It was for his own verdict that he was really waiting. His own verdict — ^his own, and Olwen's. For if the jury brought it in guilty, it would be all up with himsftlf and with Olwen. CHAPTER XV. Fob twenty minutes the suspense was terrible. Harry waited there, worn and pale, haggard with sleeplessness, hearing his own heart beat each moment in his breast meanwhile, and drawing his breath deep and irregularly. What an eternity it seemed, that long, slow interval, while the twelve good men and true in their own room sat debating the case at their leisure by themselves, and deciding with thorough-going British stolidity upon their verdict of life and death for William Wilcox and Harry Chichele. He hardly dared to glance around him even, ao awfully did the horrible chances of mishap weigh upon his soul. He kept his eyes firmly fixed the whole time upon the prisoner at the bar, who had BO much less to lose by the verdict than he, and could lose it all ten thousand times more carelessly. If only Harry could have thought him guilty 1 If only he could have believed it was the wounds that killed her 1 But he knew him to be innocent — he knew him to be innocent ; and to let an innocent man suffar a.t tba bands of offeadtd f% THB devil's DIB. jiutice in his own place would indeed have revolted the inmost and most sacred feelings of his nature. It is hard to have such a character as his ; hard to be able to sin ao boldly, and yet to pr.y for it like the veriest tyro. What would he do if the jury brought in a verdict of guilty ? He did not know. He could not determine. How, or where, or when to confess the truth, and to save that brutal ruffian from amply-merited — yet unjust— punishment, ho could not decide ; but save him he must, and at all hazards. Strong as he was, he was not hardened. It would be terrible for Olwen ! Death for Olwen 1 But justice must be done, though the heavens fall in upon us. Come what might, he must secure plain justice for the man Wilcox. At last the jury filed slowly back into their accustomed place. A hushed stillness fell upon the court. Harry Chichele, pale as death, leaned eagerly forward on the rail to listen. Even Bill himself, though impassive still, and desirous as ever to preserve his wonted equanimity, yet showed signs of a certain suppressed internal anxiety to hear theif decision. A heightened colour flushed his florid cheek, and the corners of his heavy square-set mouth were twitching nervously. •' Gentlemen of the jury, are you all agreed upon your verdict ? " •♦We are." *' Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty of wilful murder?" Dead silence prevailed through the room as the foreman answered in slow and measured tones — ' " We find him guilty." At the words, an awful horror darkened for the moment Harry Chichele's eyes. He clutched the rail to keep himself from falling. The room reeled and swam around him. His heart was beating vio- lent now, and his breath came and went in short sharp snaps, with feverish rapidity. He hardly heard the rest of the proceedings. It was as in a dream, vaguely, that he thought he saw the judge, with solemn formality, assume the black cap, and pass sentence of death upon William Wilcox for the murder that he himself had really committed. Things had indeed come to a terrible pass. When Harry Chichele accelerated the departure of that miserable creature in the cot at the hospital, he had never dreamt of such an end as this. He had taken it for granted that the clear and certain medical evidence which he and his colleafTues could produce in court would exonerate her husband from all possibility of blame in the matter. He had imagined that a jury would accept his statement of the cause of death as absolutely infall- ible. And now — he opened his eyes in terror. A ghastly phantas- magoria floated before his face. Solemn sounds echoed dimly in his ringing ears. It was the judge's voice passing sentence. " And there hanged by the neck till dead," it said with grave emphasis. "And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul 1 " May the Lord have mercy upon your soul ! May the Lord have mercy upon your soul ! VVliDse soul ? That creature Bill's ? Nono, his own ; Harry Chichele'a. F^'" '^' was Uariy Chichele's condemnLtion THK devil's DIl. 79 that he heard echoing through that phantom court ; tho judge was really passing sentence, he felt, not upon Bill, not upon Bill, that miserable rullian, but upon him, upon him — upon the real culprit, Harry Chichele I A buzz and bustle possessed the room. The prisoner was led down doggedly from the dock. The crowd melted away piecemeal, its excite- ment over, from the body of the court. A fresh prisoner was brought up to the bar. New witnesses crowded into their p]ace by the door. Counsel and judge, beginning over again, ashamed fresh attitudes for their altered parts. Another drama was being enacted now on the scene of that ever-changing theatre. But Harry Chichele stood there still, incapable of movement, thought, or action ; and Mohammad All stood beside him, with his hand set hard upon his trembling arm, half pitying the man in his alarm and terror. For a while he seemed as if rivetted to the spot. At last Ali led him gently away, hurried him once more into a hansom at the kerb, and drove him back, silent and moody, to the Regent's Park Hospital. In his rooms, little Lizbeth met him, jubilant. " Well, they're a-goin' for to 'ang 'im," she said triumphantly. "I'm ju^t glad at they're a-goin' for to 'ang 'im. Some of 'em say the Queen'U pardon *im, becoz o* the medical evidence bein' for 'im. But I 'ope she won't. She's got no call to. They'd ought to 'ang 'im for murderin' mother 1 ** The child's exclamation brought a gleam of hope to Harry's bewild- ered mind. He had been too pre-occupied even to think of that obvioui loophole. A pardon 1 A pardon ! The Home Secretary was no British juryman. He, at least, was an educated gentleman ; a person of responsibility ; a man of sense and experience and judgment. He would recognize at once it was a foolish miscarriage. He would listen to the voice of medical science. He would hear what those who knew had to say upon the subject. He would prevent this gross perversion of justice. Burning with eagerness, he turned to consult Mohammad Ali. " We must see the Home Secretary this very day," he cried. ** The man must not be hanged. It's wicked. It's incredible." " 'E smashed 'er 'ead in," Lizbeth put in manfully, ** 'an 'e said 'e'd do for her. 'E meant for to kill *er, and they'd ought to 'ang him for ife. That's wot the laws is for, ain't it ?" *' No zeal, my dear fellow," Mohammad Ali answered, endeavouring to restrain him. " You lost the case in court by too much zeal. Don't lose it out of court by the same indiscretion." But Harry was not to be restrained now. His whole life concentrated itself at once on that one point, with the usual fiery concentration of his nature when once aroused. He lived only, for the moment, for that single purpose, to get that atrocious verdict set aside, and to secure ft free pardon for William Wilcox. For the next week, indeed, he lived for nothing else. Of course, he was met at every turn by red tape in endless profusion ; but when Harry Chichele once took a thing fairly into his head red tape was not a strong enough material to prevent him froro carrying his design into 80 THE devil's die. execntion. One morning shortly after, as he walked with fiery *arneflt- ness down Whitehall, he met Ivan Royle, now a different man, strolling up from Westminster to Pall Mall. Ivan, just back in town, was atruck at once with the change in his appearance. *' Why, my dear fellow," he cried, " who has painted you all out, and put you in again several tones lower ? " Harry explained with eager heat the nature of the situation — sup- pressing, of course, the unessential detail of the ice-bag. His evident sincerity impressed Ivan most favourably as to his humai>e sentiments. " The black man was wrong," the painter thought to himself, with generous appreciation of his rival's merits. *' Chichele'a a kind-hearted man at bottom. At last, by almost superhuman efforts, he broke through the endless oarriers of red tape that block up the doors and gateways of Whitehall hnd Downing Street, and obtained a personal interview from the Home Secretary for himself, the house surgeon, and Mohammad Ali. That was a real step in advance. The medical evidence was too unanimous for even a Homo Secretary to disregard. When Harry Chichele emerged into Whitehall once more that morning it was with a positive promise from the elusive and evasive right honourable gentle- man that her Majesty would be graciously pleased to pardon William Wilcox for the crime which, in fact, he had never committed. That is the utmost to which British justice can ever nerve itself. So firm and inflexible and infallible is it, that when once it has found a man guilty, right or wrong, the angel Gabriel himself could never prevail to have the prisoner declared really innocent. British justice can never reverse % sentence ; it can only grant a free pardon. It saves its consistency at the expense of its victim. Armed with even that insufficient assurance, however, Harry Chi- chele stepped forth into Whitehall ano^.lier being. He felt a free man now. A terrible burden had been lifted from tiis shoulders. 01 wen was saved, and he himself need never confess that — well, that unfortu- nate little indiscretion of the ice-bag. Once more the reaction wa« sudden and violent. Harry Chi- chele'a gaiety became, in fact, ludicrously extreme. Mohammad Ali noticed it with profound suspicion. Why should the man have thrown himself so fervidly into this work of xni^- cy ? Why should he have embraced it with such fiery eagerness ? Why should he exhibit the recoil and relief of his strained feelings with such boyish exuberance of delight and freedom? It looked all the same way. Surely there was the sense of personal danger and personal escape expressed in his vio- lent and overwrought emotion. When they reached home, Harry flung himself down in his easy-chair, laughed and talked with almost hysterical hilarity, and astonished Ivan Royle, who had dropped in to see his Polperran friends, by the unwonted boisterousnesB of his conversation. The cloud was fairly lifted from hia life now, and he and Olwen might be happy together. After all, he almost wondared he had been such a fool as to takathinga \fi he)irt HO aeriouBly m he bad done. He mi^^ht hftve known the Hon* THE devil's DIB. 81 Secretary, at least, would listen to reason. These politicians are sensi- ble men — men oi the world — not mere pettifogging pedants like the English judges. Everything was going so well, now, that he could hardly understand his own terrors and alarms yesterday. The case was finished ; the man was pardoned. His theory was proved. The Royal Society had virtually accepted it and stamped his doctrine with the seal of their approval. He would be rich and famous and honoured still ; and before long he would doubtless be able to marry Olwen. The intoxication of success had come over him once mo)'e. The little episode of the ice-bag was already dismissed with sublime indiflFerence from his brain and his conscience. For, after all, it was all right now. No harm had been done — or none worth speaking of ; and endless good had accrued in the end to humanity at large, and to himself and Olwen. To be sure this awkward little hitch had intervened, as hitches will sometimes unexpectedly intervene in all human designs and operations. '* The best-laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley," as the poet has told us. But that was an accident—a passing accident ; the solid good remained untouched behind it. A glorious means of averting epidemic disease had now been found; and he and Olwen might be all the happier for it. "And yet," he said aloud at last, after a long pause, to Ivan Royle, *' this business has given me a lesson, anyhow. I shall steer clear in future of all these murder cases. They're too much anxiety for a pro- fessional man. They involve such a lot of trouble and bother." " But how can you steer clear of them ? " Mohammad Ali interposed with a puzzled air. *' You couldn't possibly have avoided this one, for instance. It was thrust upon you, without your seeking. You didn't know it would end in a trial." ** True," Harry answered, a little uneasily. He was far too candid in speaking out his thoughts. It was so hard to bear in mind always how others looked at this little matter. He must be more guarded in his language in future, or that sharp fellow, Ali, with his Indian acute- nesa, would begin to suspect him of knowing more than ho said about it. There was one comforu, however ; let Ali prick up his ears and pick up his hints as much as he liked, he could never have more than the merest and vaguest suspicion in the matter. The crime itself — he sup- posed conventional people would call it a crime in their absurd way — was absolutely trackless. The ice was melted. He had unstitched the waterproof bags ages ago, and not a particle of evidence anywhere remained to bring the facts of the case home to him. He had manu'.jed it cleverly ; very cleverly. When a bungler tries this sort of thing, ytu know, he makes a miserable mess of it, of course ; but with the cool, collected brain and hands of the man of science, success in a physio- logical and personal experiment of this sort becomes almost an absolute certainty. He was quite proud of the result now. He had never, in his whole professional course, managed a difficult and doubtful case more cleverly And BuccessfuUjr* m S2 THB DETIl's DIK. As he sat in his rooms a little later with Ivan Royle and Ali, by that evening's post a letter arrived for him, " On Her Majesty's Service." Letter«i on her Majesty's service were uncommon events with Harry Chichele ; and after the manifold changes and turns of circumstances, with their varying emotions, in the last few weeks, this one caustid him no little momentary anxiety. He looked at it cautiously front and back, before he dared to break the big red official seal, (jr to o])en atid read what it had to say to him. Could that perfidious Home Secretary have played him false after all, and violated his doubly-pledged right honourable word in the matter of the pardon ? Could he mean to hang the man Bill ? Was this whole sickening and ghastly ej)isode to be lived right over again from the very beginning ? Harry Chichele turned deadly pale at the bare idea, and his delicate fingers trembled visibly as he tried to tear open that mysterious letter. Mohammad Ali, still watching him close with his cat-like gaze, noticed how he fumbled and boggled over the seal, and how his bloodless lips were quivering tremoulously with suppressed excitement. At last he tore the letter open. Its contents were short, plain and startling. This was what Harry Chichele read, to his utter surprise, in the large, round, legible official hand on the big sheet of clean white foolscap with the ample allowance of folded margin : — ** Sir, " I am directed by the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Home Department, to inform you that her Majesty has been graciously pleased to approve of your name as first occupant o£ the new professorial chair of medical aatiology recently founded a| University College, London. The emoluments of the chair will bo £800 (eight hundred pounds) per Minum. — I have the honour to be* Sir, ** Your obedieni servant, "Ralph Obmbrod." Harry dropped the 2e*iter^ speechlose with surprise. So this waa what that curious little episode had brought him. He saw Sir Roderic's finger in it all. How could he ever have been such an idiot as to take BO much to heart the small inconveniences it had momentarily entailed upon him. Great enterprises invariably require skill and patience. But this was the reward of his courage and his research. After all, the old maxim holds good as ever, still, and wisdom is justified of all her children. By his own hand, by his own hand, he had done it. A fool would have let the opportunity slip, and allowed the miserable obscure Ger- man to walk off unobserved with the honours of discovery. A coward would have shrunk from putting the well-desi'^ned plan into execution, and would hHve failed at the last moment in the courage of his convic- tions. But ho, Harry (Ihichele, by his own hand, had done it. He had boldly conceived and Bucco.'-Hfully curried out that admirable exper- iment for prvvin{{ ur dispruviiig thu truth of his theory. Ue had THE devil's DIB. 83 plnrned wisely and ventured well. And, verily, now he had his reward — u R 'yal professorship of eight hundred per annum. Ivan Royle, directed by a nod from Harry, was reading the letter. "My dear fellow," he cried with an hearty and heartfelt shake of the hand, "I'm awfully glad 1 I congratulate you most sincerely on your good luck. You deserve it all. But what in heaven's name is medical aetiology ? " CHAPTER XVL What is one solitary human life to a true philospher ? In a week or two more the " little episode," as Harry always called it in his own mind, was as clean dead and buried and forgotten as Sal herself in her nameless pauper grave at Kensal Green Couietery. When once the turmoil and trouble of the trial were over : when Bill much to his own blank astonishment, had duly received his free pardon ; when a couple of pounds lawful coin of the realm, transferred from Harry Chichele's pocket, had purchased the entire fee simple of little Lizbeth, besides setting the periwinkle business once more afloat as a going concern, with new properties and decorations throughout — when all these things had satisfactorily happened in turn, Harry Chichele had so much to occupy his mind in other ways that he almost ceased to think of the little epi- sode itself at all in the hurry and bustle of his manifold engagements. For first of all, there was the new professorship to undertake — that mynterious professorship of the aetiology of disease, the very meaning of whose name he was obliged to explain with profuse learning to everybody he came across for the next six months. " What the dick- ens is (etiology ? " became to him so familiar a question at clubs, as "Oh, Dr. Chichele, do please tell us what aetiology means 1" became in drawing-rooms, that before long he learnt to recognize instinctively the very purso of the lips that ushered it in, and could answer the out- spoken query oflliand before it was even fairly propounded. The chair of aitiology, it may be readily imagined, is a very serious chair indeed for a man to fill ; and Harry felt in his heart that so younec and inex- perienced a person as he was must do his level best in eye-glasses and deportment to till it with becoming grace and dignity. So the " duties of his oftice," as he loved to say with m\7ch gusto, occupied the larger part of his time and energy at present— at least, the larger part of the residue leftover after the alternative and equally important duties of his onerous daily correspondence with Olwen Tregellas. For love, too, is an exacting taskmaster ; he imposes upon whomever he catches in his firm clutch no mean amount of literary labour. And now that these elusive germs were fairly settled, and the question of the pardon fairly solved, and the chair of aetiology fairly set up in work- ing order on its own four solid and sensible legs, Harry Chichele, looking about him with a freer glance at the world at large, began to 84 THE devil's DI8. reflect with a sigh of relief that a place had at last been created worthy of Olwen, and that Olwen herself might now not ungracefully be invited in her own good time to come and fill it. He mentioned this reflection casually one morning to Mohammad Ali ; and Mohammed Ali, shaking his head in a somewhat oracular fashion, answered that he had expected as much himsfilf, and answered, Harry somehow fancied to his surprise, as if he didn t exactly relish the prospect either. Next day Mohammed Ali called early at Ivan Royle's studio in old Kensington. He found the painter in his velveteen coat and Rem- brandt cap, busily engaged in putting the finishing touches to a Cornish picture. It was a pretty little glimpse of dark red rock and blue sea in a tiny cove, not far from Polperran, and the foreground was occu- pied by a light and graceful girlish figure in a flowery summer dress, shading her eyes with her small white hand, and gazing eagerly to sea- ward for some expected vessel. On an easel by the side stood the original study of a Cornish girl, from which the figure itself had been filled in — a careful and delicately appreciative study of Olwen Tregel- las. There was poetry in every detail of her pose ; there was soul in every line and turn of her features. Mohammad Ali looked at it long and smiled sadly. " Still working at her, Royle," he said at last, with a gentle and almost melancholy cadence. " Still working at her, my dear fellow," Ivan Royle replied, looking up from his palette ; *' and I shall work at her, I suppose, more or less now, as long as I remain in the land of the living. A face like that, once seen, burns itself into the very fabric of a painter's brain ; he can never long keep it out of his thoughts or his canvas." *' Harry Chichele's going to be married," Mohammad Ali broke out brusquely. He made no sort of introduction or apology for his sudden speech. He flung the fact, as it were, full in Ivan Royle's face, and then waited for him to resent it and retaliate. " So I expected," Ivan answered with a quiet sigh, standing back a ,pace or two off from the easel, and inspecting his handicraft with modesfs complacency. *' It can't be helped. Perhaps — I don't know — it's all for the best. Perhaps he's wortlwer of her, Ali, than I am." *' It is not for the best," Mohammad Ali replied bitterly. ** It's for the worst, for the worst, very much for the worst. Royle, my heart sinks within me to think of it. I distrust that man, I disbelieve in that man. I fear that man, .^r Olwen Tregellas. Can't we do any- thing anyhow to prevent it ? " *' I d(m't see that we can," Ivan answered after a short pause. " She loves him and prefers him. Her will is law in such a matter. It would be ungenerous and unmanly of me even to try to interfere between them, supposing I saw my way to doing it. Why do you mistrust him, Ali ? Why do you disbelieve in him ? Have you seen or heard any> thing fresh to set you against him ? Or is it still only the old Begum business ?" Mohammad Ali took » seah by the window, and began by very delicate side hints to impart his latest suspicion to Ivan. He dida't THK DETIL*S DI8. 8A ■ay what he thought or fancied outright, but told his story carefully and suggestively, dwelling upon each suspicious point exactly as it had •truck him. Before he had got half way through with it, however, he became dimly aware that the tale was falling quite flat on Ivan's simple, ■traightf(jrward English nature. The Englishman listened with polite incredulity. He could not believe so much harm of any one so trans- parently kind-hearted and well-meaning as Harry Chichele. When Mohammad Ali, by well-pieced hints and scattered fragments of Harry's conversation, had fairly brought out the true nature of his profound suspicion, Ivan clapped his hand on the Indian's shoulder with a smile of something like genuine amusement, and exclaimed heartily, "My dear friend, this won't do. You're on the wrong tack — on the wrong tack entirely. Your cleverness positively overshoots itself. You're allowing your own predilections, and your own subtlety and ingenuity of mind to run away with you and lead you at last into very queer and impossible places. This kind of thing may be believed in India, you know, but it's too diabolically and horribly clever to go down in England." He didn't add — how could he ? — that in his own heart the very fact of Mohammad Ali's having hit upon such a black suspicion had pre- judiced him a little against the Indian himself. Nobody had a right to start such ideas about other people. Even if a white man had hinted so ghastly a thing as that to him about anybody else, it would have given him a worse opinion of his informant ; when a black man does it, all the profoundest and cruolost race instincts of our nature are aroused against him, and we say to ourselves with our European complacency, " No Englishman would ever have invented anything so grotesquely wicked and so utterly inadecjuate." Ivan Royle, indeed, recoiled a little from Ali's suggestion, as every- body always must recoil from the imputation of serious crime against a man with whom we have ever lived on terms of intimate familiarity ; and the recoil made him look more favourably than before upon Harry Chichele's pretensions and wishes. In his own manly, straightforward English way, he was quite ready to confess himself beaten, in love or war, without casting imputations on his rival's character, or listening to horrible, ill-founded hints that told against his probable future con- duct. Hl laughed down Ali's recondite speculations ; and Ali himself, seeing how Ivan's bright and sunny nature could brush away the very imputation of evil, felt himself for the moment half reassured by the interview, and ventured still to hope the best for Olwen. If only he could have forgotten the 8t<^)ry of the Begum I Two days lit or Harry Ohichelu stepped round in exuberant spirits to his friend's studio to inform Ivan that a date had now been fixed for the wedding, and to ask him whether, as the happy event wr.8 to take place at Polperran, ho would assume the arduous duties of best man io memory of their first meting in Cornwall. Woi'ld fate intervene to prevent the marriage ? Fate can never be trusted at a pinch. So it came to pass before many week^ WWe OTer that Olwen Trugollas was really married to Harry GIhc^jqIq* 66 THB devil's die. Harry had altogether forgotten now everything about the little episode. He had never from the first had any shadow or fear of detection — detection, indeed, was morally impossible : and now that the difficulty about Bill was well overcome, and little Lizbeth decently settled in life, he had ceased to trouble his philosophic head any more about the matter, Being by nature an even-tempered and light-hearted person (save when profound emotions intervened to stir his soul to its inmost depths), he had cast aside the entire subject once for all ; and now, intoxicated with success and in. the full flush of love and happineaa, he looked and really was as handsome, open, and proud a bridefrrooin as any girl within the four sea walls of Britain could wish to marry. Ivan Royle, too, accepted his doubtful duties as best man (for no authority has ever yet been able satisfactorily to define the precise nature of a best man's functions) with much manful kindliness and good nature. Olwen had blushed a little, indeed, when Harry first men- tioned to her that he had selected Ivan for that particular post ; but Ivan himself had greeted her on his arrival with so much frank cordi- ality and genuine good feeling that Olwen gladly recognized in him a true friend, and forgot her first little timid hesitancy. Among the wedding presents, by far the handsomest was a set of antique oriental dessert knives and forks — solid silver, with exquisite inlaid ivory handles — bearing in rather arabesque letters on the cover of the box a neat inscription, " H. O. 0. — from Mohammad All." Harry Chichele looked at them with admiration and surprise. Moham- mad Ali was comfortably olf, that much he knew ; — the old native banker at Saharanpur, proud of his handsome Europeanized son, had always made him a most ample allowance, drawn from the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind ;— but Harry had hardly imagined till than that the Indian doctor could afford so valuable and costly a present. As -a matter of fact, Mohammad Ali could not afford it ; he had stretched a point for this special occasion, and wasted a whole month's income on a fitting gift for Olwen's wedding. Harry looked at the costly oriental things with a softening heart. On one's wedding day, one sees the world through rose-coloured spectacles. "After all," he said to himself gaily, *' Ali'sa good fellow, and a threat deal fonder of me than I ever thought, or he wouldn't have bought me such a beautiful present. Of late, I've been inclined to fancy sometimes he wasn't quite so friendly and pleasant as he used to be. I almost suspected him, indeed, of suspecting me 1 Pooh 1 What nonsense. I laid my plans too deep for that. Conscience makes cowards of us all, I suppose ; though not, thank goodness, of me, at any rate. Pretty reflections tb"=e for a man at his wedding I It's a comfort to know 1 was mistakt- after all, and that All's really the same good fellow and good frieiid as ever. He never even thought of it as a present to Olwen. So much do we all read things from our own side alone. So much does every one of us misinterpret the springs of action in the motives of others. Another very pretty wedding present of Olwen's was a little water- eoloor af a r*orniBh garden, with a girl's light figure standing out in the THE devil's die. 87 foreground, between clambering sprays of clematis and jftfllfiilie ; and visitors from a distance whispered to one another, *' It's her own ideal portrait, you know, by Mr. Royle, the well-known artist, who was Dr. Chichele's best man, and Tvhorn he and the Hindoo gentleman, with the Mahommedan name, saved, you remember, from the wreck of that famous cholera ship last autumn. You must have read all about it at the time in the papers. But during the course of the wedding breakfast, when Harry Chichele's health was proposed in a most eulogistic speech, the Hindoo gentleman, with the Mahommedan name, felt a curious shudder come creeping over nim, and a cold tremour down the spinal cord overtake him with a rush, at a painful thought that just then flashed unex- pectedly across his mental horizon. For all of a sudden, in the midst of all that din, bustle, and gaiety, as everybody was talking and think- ing about Harry Chichele, and what a wonderfully clever fellow he had proved himself, and what important medical discoveries ho had made, and what a great and famous man he was and would be, that old sus- picion about the cause of Sarah Wilcox's death recurred with startling vividness, as if by direct external suggestion, to Mohammad Ali's pre- occupied mind ; and like a flash of lightning it came over him to think that on that fatal night ho had never felt Harry Chichele's other hand — the hand he had kept so long concealed in his pocket and laid at last upon the dying woman. And then, with the instantaneous and ^ instinctive conviction of his Arab nature, the hideous truth came clearly home to him in a burst of intuitive certainty, that, in spite of all these fair speeches and praises, they were all assembled there that day to see Olwen Tregellas married to a murderer. It was too late now to think any more of it. She was married to him at last — irrevocably married to him. The moment for action waa lono gone past ; there was only time in future for regret and repentance. For Olwen 's sake, he must never again breathe his suspicions to any man. For Olwen's sake, he must still try to believe in her husband. The champagne bubbled and beaded merrily in his glass. Every- body was smiling and bowing and nodding. The word went round, *' The Bridegroom's Health." All the guests raised their glasses and drank. Mohammad Ali raised his with the rest. When they set them down again, there was one glass untasted among them. " You haven't drunk happiness to the bridegroom," the lady beside him murmured lotv with a smile. Ali answered her with an evasive prevarication. ** I'm a Moslem," he said, " and you know the Koran forbids the faith- ful to taste of wine." It was the first time since he came to England he had ever pleaded Islam as an excuse for abstemiousness. And with that double evil augury, Olwen Chichele's married life beguk 88 TUB DflYUi'S DIB CHAPTER XVIL The first twelve months of 01 wen Chichele's married life passed quietlj' and happily enoup;h. Of course she and Harry did not live entirely in an earthly paradise. Ante-nuptial expectations of a per- petual honeymoon break down on trial before the stern realities of mundane house-keeping. There are no "books to pay" in the forecast of the betrothed. Still, when judged by the more modest and realistic standard of the actually married, the two young people jogged along very happily together in their matrimonial harness. If their wedded life was not at all times quite as ecstatically blissful as they had imag- ined it would be in the days when they wandered side by side, with thrilling hearts, among the gorse and heather at dear old Polperran, at least they were as averagely comfortable and sympathetic with one another as any ordinary husband and wife can ever expect in this work- a-day world of ouvs. Harry was really and truly fond and proud of his sweet little wife ; and when he took her out to dinner at great houses in London, and heard the oft- whispered inquiry, "Who's that awfully pretty dark girl in the white dress over yonder?" his bosom swelled within him with the pride of possession at the usual flattering answer, " 1'hat's Mrs. Chichele, wife of the clever doctor fellow who invented germs, and so forth, don't you know ; her husband's professor of some° thing-or-other unpronounceable at University College." Olwen, too, for her part, was exceedingly happy. Harry seemed kindness and goodness itself to her; and although, of course, like most other women, she had to come down in time off that earlier pedestal of the engaged angel to walk the solid earth, in due course, a prosaic married woman of flesh and blood, much preoccupied with weighty questions of the weekly bills or the new housemaid's Sunday out arrangements, she, nevertheless, found him always as attentive and demonstrative as a mere husband can ever, in the nature of things, be expected to show himself. But every woman is potentially a duchess. Men sometimes rise to the occasion ; women always do ; and Olweu bore her blushing honours lightly on her — as lightly as if she had been accustomed all her life long to give her arm to a real live philosopher as the servants announced " Dinner's ready, mum," and to discuss the Absolute and Unknowable between the courses with an eminent psycho- logist and a distinguished member of the French Academy. And the germs 1 Well, the germs continued to survive, and to per- vade society much the same as ever. Epidemic diseases were not yet altogether stamped out, it is true, and diphtheria and scarlatina still floated invisible upon the summer breeze very much as they had done since the beginning of time, before the woman Wilcox had been oflered up on the altar of humanity as a vicarioua sacrifice to the all- coohat ? " Harry asked, looking up in surprise wiCh ft hasty glance from his soup-plate. ** From English despotism," the countess repeated in the same sweet measured tones as before, transfixing him in turn with '^hose clear grey eyes of hers. " You have a eovereign in England, an inexorable poten- tate, whom I try to avoid for one half at least of every twelve-month. Of late, I'vfc avoided her altogether. No other despotism existing on earth can be so watchful or so exacting as that English sovereign of yours. A Russian czar may dictate to his subjects their political creed and their religious opinions. An oriental despot may order about his sultanas and his Circassian slaves ; may tax his people's salt and ghee and marriages ; but he doesn't interfere in every petty action of his lieges in their daily life, or poke his nose in at the windows of their huts at the moment when they're engaged upon the domestic dinner. Now, your English potentate does all this ; her Argus eyes are erer upon you ; her spies are watching you all day long ; nothing is too small or too private for her notice ; nothing is too sacred for her open criticism and her public animadversion." The countess paused and looked hard at Harry. Olwen felt herself called upon to answer some- thing. ** And her name ? " she said, with some little wonderment. ** Is Mrs. Grundy," the countess retorted sharply. " You English, in solemn conclave assembled, fall down ^nd worship Mrs. Grundy. All other despotisms are feared and hated ; but Mrs. Grundy is faith- fully served on every side by willing victims. Queen and Parliament would be powerless to touch the minute matters of every-day existence which Mrs. Grundy regulates for you all with a rod of iron. No legislative enactment could ever compel you yourself, for instance, to wear clothes which you didn'o like, or to buy a bonnet which you didn't think ' so very becoming.' Mrs. Grundy issues her sumptuary edict, and forthwith you array yourself in an inflated balloon, or gird yourself round with iron cage- work, or drape yourself in skirts that cling about your limbs like a wet bathing dress. Your husband would like to wear a soft felt hat instead of the orthodox shining . chimney-pot in the streets of London — but what would Mrs. Grundy say ? The thing's impossible. The eyes of England and of the Grundy* are upon you. It would be pleasant to ride home to-day on top of the omnibus ; but Mrs. Grundy walks, ten thousand strong., down Regent- street, the Strand, and Piccadilly ; and in deference to her understood opinions, you take a cab instead and go home half-a-crown the poorer. For my part, I hate Mrs. Grundy. She drives me an exile from my own land. I prefer to escape her by spending the winter here on the Riviera, and flying for the summer to the breezy heights of free Switzerland." *• I wonder who Mrs. Gnindy is ? " Olwen murmured, inquiringly. *' Don't you know ? " the countess cried, with an accent of surprise. I thought everybody knew that ! Why, she's just the farmer's wife in the old play of * Speed the plough ' — nothing but the next-door farmer's wife — no a.3se, I aMure you ; the persouifllwJiou aod embodiment <»l Ttti divil'i dik. 9t petty everyday female tyranny. This ceremonial government, which sums itself up in Mrs. Grundy's name, is really and truly a petticoat government, a system of life devised, maintained, enforced, and carried out solely by women. Men go to Parliament and make the laws. What does that matter ? Women stop at home and constitute collectively that grand impersonal absolute despotism which sums itself up as Mrs. Grundy. There are three kinds of government in the world, invented respectively by men, by priests, and by women. Political government — the masculine form —hurts nobody ; after all, it has no effect. Ecclesiastical government — the epicene form — hurts us somewhat ; but we've lived it down, and we can, all of us, escape it if we choose now- adays. Ceremonial government— the feminine form — presses upon us every day of our lives, from the cradle to the grave, with all the petty minute persistence and persecution of women. It ia woman's invention, and it bears upon its face the unmistakable mint mark of feminine in- tolerance." *' You're hard upon women," Olwen said with a smile. ** For mj part, I like my own sex." " I don't," the countess responded frankly. ** Man is really worth a hundred thousand of us. If you want breadth of view, go to man for it. If yon want wide sympathy, go to man for it. If you want genial- ity, toleration, expansiveness, justice, go to man for them. But if you prefer narrow-mindedness, intolerance, petty criticism, restricted lyra- pathies, harsh injustice, positive cruelty, go to woman for them ; gu to woman, and verily I say unto you, you will not be disappointed." She poised an olive on the end of a dessert fork as she spoke, and glanced up at Harry for approbation. ''Most women would be afraid to admit it," Harry replied compla- cently. He liked to be included in the ranks of a sex which possessed BO many delightful characteristics. ** Most women, true ; but I am not most women. I am myself, and I have the courage of my convictions," the oountess answered with a delicious smile. For the rest of dinner time she addressed her remarks mainly to Harry, and Olwen was glad of it. Such conversation she had never heard before. It subdued and annihilated her. The countess flowed on like a majestic river. Her speech never faltered or hesitated for a moment. It came out always in an even stream with all the regular ease and balanced rhythm of a practised orator's. As they finished their last raisins and oranges, the countess roc« with stately complacency. ** Shall we go into the drawing-room ? "she said to Olwen. sweeping up her train with her hand as she spoke. Olwen, afraid of her and half-repelled still, attempted to follow. The countess motioned her imperiously in front with a regal wave of her beautiful hand. " Married ladies first," she said ; *' Mrs. Grundy wills it." Olwen obeyed, but half mistrusted herself even for obeying. Sha must be a countess in her own right then, Olwen thought to herself ; she had yielded precedence to a doctor's wife on the ground of being a single woman. They had scarcely seated themselves in the comfortable easy ohain (7) 98 THB pBTIL*8 DIE. by a small table in a retired corner, the countess just toying latily with her LouIb Quinze fan, and 01 wen, for the very first time in her whole life, feeling dimly conscious of a certain awkward doubt as to how to manage the conduct of her hands, when the big door from the main corridor opened suddenly, and in walked Ivan Royle and Mohammad All. Ivan advanced towards them all at once, with his frank smile and hearty welcome. "How well you're looking, Chichele," he cried, delighted. *' And Mrs. Chichele, too, as fresh and bright and light as ever. This is just jolly. We're so enchanted to see you. Ali and and I barely missed the train at St. Raphael by thirty seconds. Lost our way among the hills, and couldn't get right again. However, it doesn't matter, I see, for you have made yourselves acquainted even in our absence. You couldn't be mistaken, of course," turning to the countess, "as to this being Harry and Mrs. Chichele." The countess bit the top of her fan in dubious acquiescence. " On the contrary," she said at last, after an awkward pause, with marked coldness, "I concluded these couldn't be your friends, Ivan. Indeed, the very first thing I ever said to them was just that — that the people we expected this afternoon hadn't turned up. To my mind, Mrs. Chichele dosen't at'all answer to the description you gave me of her. You always used to be so bad at description. " Ivan and Olwen both coloured up with some embarrassment. The countess perceived it, and having shot her bolt and seen it fall on the weak spot, she was woman of the world enough to retrieve her position at once with feminine strategy. " I didn't expect any one half so young, and girlish, and fresh," she went on, with a, charming smile towards Olwen. " You know, Ivan, you hadn't in the least led me to look out for a Spenserian idyl in pink muslin. So, of course, we haven't dreamt of introducing ourselves to one another. Now, my dear boy, will you have the goodness to be master of the ceremonies ? " Ivan laughed an uneasy laugh. " Mrs. Chichele," he said, " you will, of course, have guessed that this is my cousin, Miss Seeta Mayne, to whom you have been talking. You know, Seeta, Harry Chichele is a ■worn admirer of all your novels. " Miss Mayne bowed ; the countess had dissappeared from the scene forth- with as if by magic. *' Not to know Dr. Chichele," she said in her courtly grand manner, still wielding the fan as if it had been a sceptre, " argues one's self unknown, I'm afraid. But you must remember," she added, half apologetically, " I see so little in my humble way of the great scien- tific world of London." Olwen noticed in a moment two small points — first, that Seeta Mayne thought only of Harry and entirely ignored his poor little wife as a mere adjunct of the clever doctor ; second, that she knew as if by instinct exactly where to flatter her husband's vanity. In a vague way, Olwen was already afraid of this great, clever, beautiful woman — afraid of her, not, of course, for herself, but for Harry — for Harry. Three minutes after, while Harry and Olwen where exchanging notei by the centre table with Mohammad Ali, Seeta Mayne drew Ivan Roylt THB devil's dis. 99 aside into a quiet corner. " My dear boy," she said to him in a ban- tering undertone, yet half accusingly, " how on earth could you ever dream of bo absurdly misleading me about that poor little Mrs. Chichele of yours ? Why, Ivan, you told me she was pretty 1 " '*So she is," Ivan answered stoutly, with his plain, simple, masculine common-sense. " The prettiest girl I ever saw anywhere." Seeta Mayne's lip curled an almost imperceptible and delicate curl. " That insignificant baby-faced little doll 1" she murmured with a bland and tolerant smile. " My dear Ivan, you will never be a judge of beauty in women 1 A poor little pink-and-white atomy like that 1 Pretty indeed 1 And you call yourself a painter 1 May the shade of La Fornarina mercifully forgive you ! " And she drew herself up to her full height, no Fornarina that ever lived on earth looked in her time one half so beautiful. When Olwen sat for a moment by the olive-wood fire in their own room late that evening, she said, as lightly as she could, but still with a faltering heart, to Harry, "Well, Harry, and what do you think of Seeta Mayne now you've actually seen her 9 " ** Think 1 " Harry echoed, stirring the fire with a dash into a rousing flare of wild sparks, ** there's only one thing one could possibly think, my child, that she's just exactly what one would have expected her to be from her grand writings. But, Olweu, did you ever in your life see such eyes 9 They seem to pierce right through and through one." CHAPTER XIX. ** I'm rather tired at last, after so much travelling," Olwen said at the early breakfast next day. " Don't let's go anywhere or do any- thing particular this morning, Harry. Let's wait to explore the liona of the place till we've got over the fatigue of the journey a little." ** All right," Harry answered with his kind smile. '* I don't care a button what we do, darling, now we're once here in this delicious balmy air and sunshine. It's just glorious, isn't it? Just look at the rosea peeping in at the window, for all the world like dear old Polperran, Olwen ; and the great fluffy golden mimosas hanging in a perfect Cali- fornia of bloom on the boughs over yonder I After breakfast, Harry lighted a cigarette, and they lounged out together, hatless and bootless, on to the garden terrace. To Olwen, everything was rich with the charm of novelty. The big cactus plants, with their pale yellow flowers and pri«kly pears ; the great aloes, with their stout, sharp, needle-like points ; the clipped date palms, with their long and slender feathery foliage ; the green lizards that sucked in their sides till the ribs showed through their shagreeced skins ; the birds, the butterflies, the insects, the tree toads, all alike were beauliful and 100 THi DiTiL'f mm. interesting. She oould easily loiter away a whole long day in that enchanted garden. At a turn of the path, as they strolled on, round a clump of oleanders in full bloom, they came suddenly upon a trio of their acquaintance. Mohammad Ali, Ivan Royle, and Seeta Mayne were pacing up and down the sunny terrace towards the sea before them. Olwen's eyes fell at once instinctively on the countess. Miss Mayne was dressed this morning in a graceful and elegant flowery garden dress, with a certain delightful Louis Quinze reminiscence about its antique brooade-like design and Pompadour make-up. Her costume was lighter and breezier than before, but she looked none the less every inch a countess for all that. Only she was a countess dressed for a fete champetre^ at Fontainebleau now ; not a countess attired, as she had seemed last night, for a royal reception at Marli or the Trianon. ** So you're down at last," Ivan Royle exclaimed, coming up and grasping their hands heartily. *' Ali and I, and my cousin too, break< fasted half an hour ago or more ; but we wouldn't have you called — at least, Ali wouldn't — for we thought Mrs. Chichele would probably be a little tired this morning after her long journey." " Oh, no, I'm not the least bit tired," Olwen cried at once, with true West country politeness —your West country folks can always be firmly depended upon to say whatever is most nice and proper under all circumstances. ** At least, that is to say, hardly at all to speak of. I never mind travelling much. Miss Mayne, because I'm so little used to it, I suppose , do I, Harry ? " " I've no doubt, darling," Harry answered, demurely, ** Miss Mayne will accept your unsupported testimony." Olwen blushed. She didn't know why, but she was annoyed with Harry for just then saying just that to her. It was a frequent habit of hers, as it is of most wives, so to appeal to her husband for corrobora- tion of unimportant statements ; and Harry usually laughed off her little appeal with this stock speech of his, which relieved him from the trouble of either correcting or confirming her original proposition. But before Seeta Mayne she didn't exactly like to be thus put down. She somehow felt she must stand upon her dignity with the famous novelist. "I'm so glad you're not tired," Seeta Mayne responded, with a charming smile — and when she chose she could smile deliciously ; *' for I've just been planning a little excursion of my own for us all this morning. I want to take your husband, Mrs. Chichele, to my favourite spot away up among the heights of our glorious Esterel. It's A lovely bit. I showed it to Ivan, and he's made a simply exquisite sketch of it for next year's Academy. I'm anxious you should go there for your first trip, that Dr. Chichele may get a general cwip d'ml, and sea at once what manner of country it is that we have to offer him." Dr. Chichele, always Dr. Chichele, Olwen didn't half like it. She hesitated a moment. ** Is is far ? " she asked. *' Because- " And there she broke off suddenly. After what she had already said to Seeta about not being the least bit tired that morning, it would look lik^ 9^- DKTIL's DIB. 101 eontradiotion now to plead fatigue as a sufficient excuse for not joining the projected party. '* Oh no, it's not far," Seeta Mayne answered with careless ease. ** At least, not for moderate walkers ; and I suppose, Mrs. Chichele, after your Cornish moors — Ivan has told me all about them, of course — you don't make much of a couple of dozen miles or so. Mohammad Ali, with his quick perception — like a woman in instinct and a man in feeling— came at once to Olwen's assistance. " I don't think, Harry," he paid gently, ** Mrs. Chichele's sufficiently recovered from the fatigue of her journey to venture upon such a serious excursion this morning." Ivan Royle seconded him in haste. *' There's no hurry, Seeta," ho said, half aside. " Chichele and Mrs. Chichele are going to stop here three weeks, and the Esterels mean to remain for ever. There'll be plenty of time to go another day. The eternal hills will always wait for one. Let's put it oflf till Mrs. Chichele feels in somewhat better trim for mountain climbing." Seeta drew herself up proudly to her full height. ** I wouldn't for worlds ask Mrs. Chichele to accompany us," she said, with frigid polite- ness, ** if the fatigues of a journey from Marseilles to Cannes have so profoundly worn and overcome her. I made the mistake of imagining from what you so often told me, Ivan, that Mrs. Chichele was a con- firmed pedestrian ; was accustomed to strolling for indefinite distances over endless expanses of Cornish moorland. I pictured her an English Atalanta, perpetually roaming through illimitable spaces. I didn't know she was one of the numberless sufferers from the impaired health of the modern Englishwoman. She must excuse my error. By all means let her rest and recruit herself in the garden of the hotel to-day. You'll find the garden a most delightful lounge" — turning to Olwen, whose face was now a bright crimson — " so restful, and quiet, and retired, and bowery. Ivan, you're always a good Samaritan. You'll stop at home and look after Mrs. Chichele, I know — one good turn deserves another ; and he's never tired of telling me, Mrs. Chichele, how very kind and attentive you were to him over yonder in Cornwall. Indeed, we all owe you so many thanks for all your goodness to all our dear ones. Well, Dr. Ali and Dr. Chichele, you'll come with me, I'm sure, and I'll take you to the very loveliest spot in all the valleys of my beloved Esterel." Harry glanced at Olwen inquiringly. " Would you mind my going, Olwen ? " he asked in a hesitating tone. " I'm not in the least tired myself. In fact, I'd like to stretch my legs a bit among the mountain tops after three days' continuous railway travelling." Foor Olwen's heart was divided within her by conflicting emotions. She couldn't bear to be left at home alone with Ivan — it would be so awkward to be boxed up in the garden for a whole day with a rejected admirer — and she couldn't bear that Harry should go away from her with tJiis terrible, clever, overpowering novelist woman. Yet, on the other hand, she was really tired, and she didn't at all relish the idea of plimbing a couple of thouuand leet or lo among the steep paths of the 102 THB DEVIL'S DIB. craggy Esterel. ** I think I oould go, too, Harry," she answered at last, with evident hesitation. *' I'm not so very tired. We could take A cali down to the station, couldn't we ; and it's not very much of a climb, is it, when we get to the place we're going to start from ? " Mohammad Ali and Ivan Royle both warmly protested against her fatiguing herself, and Seeta Mayne, too, put in her word against her taking any unnecessary trouble. But Seeta Mayne's protest only made Olwen now the more determined to go ; and Harry's remonstrances being evidently lukewarm, she started at last, much against her will, for this horrid excursion among the hateful Esterels. They took their lunch with them, and set out on their tramp from Agay Station, among pine-shadowed paths that led rapidly by a steep mount up to the ruddy pinnacles of solid red porphyry. Seeta Mayne was a practised mountaineer ; she climbed the rocks with grace and ease, accepting Harry's hand over the most difficult places rather as a tribute to her inherent womanhood, Olwen fancied to herself, than from any actual or genuine need for practical assistance. Olwen, on the other hand, felt herself decidedly demoralized and out of training aft^r her year spent in the forced and feverish gaieties of London. She fell behind greatly on the line of march, straggling perpetually, though Ivan and Ali did their best to assist her and to lighten her labour ovei the steepest bits of the rugged ascent. After many windings in the zigzag path, up, and up, and ever up, with Harry and Seeta continually in front of them, they came in sight at last of a single natural obelisk of naked rock, rising high like a pillar of rude workmanship above a tor or summit of the weather-worn por- phyry. On its very top, for it was wide and massive, Seeta Mayne perched, seated in triumph like a queen upon her throne, waving them forward and encouraging them to come on with her delicately embroid- ered cambric handkerchief. Olwen toiled on and up wearily. At length, half faint with climbing, she reached the foot of the big rock itself, and with Ivan's help scaled its crannied side, till they all sat down panting together on the broad platform, with the whole expanse of the surrounding panorama stretched in endless perspective before their delighted eyes. "It's a beautiful view, certainly," Olwen ventured to murmur as she gazed around. "But, do you know, Miss Mayne, I always like better to look at the hills from below than from above. I love the gracious smiling woods and valleys, I think, far more than these vast illimitable prospects." *'I don't at all agree with you," Seeta Mayne responded, turning sharply upon her, and looking poor Olwen through and through with those great gray eyes of hers. " For my part, I love the breezy moun- tain tops. I love the broad view one gets from the imperial heights. I love the expanse, the width, the glory, the freedom. It delights me to stand, like Moses on Pisgah, or Michael in some great mediaeval cathedral window, on the exact summit of some jagged peak — some needle of rock that pierces the very vault of heaven with its sharp pin- nacle—and look down upon all the dreamy world below, valleyi ai^d VBB DSTIL'i DIB. 103 plftlm and cities of men" — and she waved her white hand vaguelj around her towards Cannes and Nice and the Italian seaboard — ** fliretched like a map far beneath my feet, for me to behold and learn Mid eomment upon." •* I am on your eide, Miss Mayne," Harry murmured quietly, drink- fav in the view trith all his eyes as he spoke. ** I love the vast, the ■vblime, the illimitable, the infinite. A valley always seems to choke and stifle me. On the free hill'topi I breathe the full fresh air of heaven, and view the world like a road before me to be travelled in the future." For ten minutes they sat and looked, talking only in little sudden bunts of exclamation and delight about that white village on the green hill-top, or that long grey road winding in a zigzag through the rocky pass over yonder. Then Seeta roused herself afresh with a hasty start. * Well, she said, looking round her, "" shall we go on now, if yon please, Mrs. Chichele ? " " Go on 1 " Olwen cried, a little distressfully. " Go on where ? Is there somewhere else to go to ? I thought, do you know, we were there already." *• There 1 " Seeta echoed. "Where? At our journey's end, do you mean 7 Oh, dear no, must decidedly not. The spot where Ivan made that lovely sketch of his is quite half an hour further on that this, away «p among tiie other mountains." ** Oh, I'm awfully sorry," Olwen replie'T. with a flushing face, "but I'm really afraid I can't go on another step for all the views in Europe. It's so long since I've done any mountain climbing, and I'm quite tired already now. But don't let me keep any of the rest of you back, I beg of you. I can stop here alone till you all return. I should be so sorry to think 1 interfered with any of your plans in any way. " **No, no," Seeta Mayne answered, not at all unkindly, for she saw Olwen was fairly done up. " You do look tired, really, Mrs. Chichele. I'm afraid it's all my own fault too, for having inveigled you into coming against your will ; though you know I advised you at first to stop at home in charge of Ivan, didn't I ? Well, now, you mustn't dream of coming a step further. Ivan has seen the place already, of oourse, and knows every stick and stone of it by heart, so he'll stop behind here gladly and take care of you. Dr. Ali and your husband will come on with me, and be back here again to you by about lunch time." *' Oh, please don't," Olwen cried in alarm. To be left for an hour alone here on the mountain tops with Ivan Royle, would be almost worse than being left at the hotel with him. What on earth could they two find to talk about ? ** Oh no," she went on, after a short pause. " Can't you all, please, r> ofif together ? I don't a bit mind being left alone. I really don't, should rather prefer it. It's so beautiful here, and I should like to look at it for ever and ever." ** Impossible ! " Ivan answered with profound conviction. "' La lonely place! And all by yourself, tool Why, there are wild 104 TBM DBYIL'fl Oil. 1>oar8 in the woods, and foxes by the dozen, and I don't eyen know that there mayn't be wolves, too ! Better stop here, Seeta, all the party, and have lunch together on this jolly platform. The Nook can wait for a more conveniout season." Seeta planted her small and neatly-shod foot conspicuously and firmly on the rock in front of her. " When 1 puts my foot down, Ivan," she quoted quietly, with her benignest smile, '*I puts it down, an' there's an end on 't. I hate this instability and infirmity of purpose. 1 was not born of the tribe of Reuben, unstable as water, who shall not excel. We started out to go to the Nook, and to the Nook I mean to go, unless the finger of fate prevents me. Mrs. Chichele breaks down by the way. We leave her here under efficient protection. Wa go on ourselves to our original objective. Nothing can be simpler. Let's share the lunch, in case we don't return in time to have any. Mrs. Chichele and you can stop behind and have a nice little talk together. The two doctors and I will continue to carry out our original pro- gramme." Olwen looked up with a face of distress. Mahommad Ali interposed to save her. Of two evils, he chose the least. If he could have split himself up into two people, Mohammad should have gone on with Harry and Miss Mayne, while Ali waited behind with Ivan Royle and Olwen. But, failing this convenient dual personality, at present confined to esoteric Buddhists and members of the Physical Research Society, Mohammad Ali judged it best in his entire capacity to save Olwen from the awkward necessity of a Ute-d-tete with Ivan. '* I will etop, too," he said in his firm, quiet, conclusive manner. ** Miss Mayne is an amply sufiScient guide by herself, Harry. She knows every inch and corner and twist and turning of these intricate moun- tains. Mrs. Chichele, you and Royle and I will stop and lunch hj ourselves here on the platform." The plan was charming. Nothing could have suited Seeta Mayn« better. She preferred the freedom of an untrammelled conversation with Harry Chichele to the restraints of Mrs. Grundy as embodied im the third person of Mohammad Ali. " Very well," she said, taking a few sandwiches and a flask from the basket. *' That'll do as well as anything else. Come along, Dr. Chichele. We'll start at once. Let us leave tliesa others to their lower levels. They prefer to remain. You and I will tread the mountain heights together.' You and 1 will tread the mountain heights together 1 These ominous words fixed themselves deeply into Olwen's tortured heart and memory. She scented dimly in her own vague way the danger for the future that the words enclosed for her. They were indeed prophetic. For her, the lower levels of thought and sencio ; for those two, the mountain heights of romance together 1 Half way down the rock, Seeta Mayne turned and called out in her clear queenly voice to Ivan, *' Look out for us at the Nook. I'll flasit the mirror at you." " What does she mean ? " Olwen asked in surprise. ** Oh," Ivan answered, with a quiet smile, *^ it'a only vim of S^etelt THS DKYIL'8 DIB. 105 dodges. She telegraphs, you knovr, by the Morse code, with a little pocket mirror she always carries. She'll let us know by a series of flashes when she and your husband finally get there. Seeta's all made up of dodges. She does nothing like ordinary people." CHAPTER XX. ^ They sat long on the rocky platform, talking for the most part of the view and the surroundings, while Olwen with her field glass fol- lowed her husband and Seeta Mayne anxiously from afar, as they threaded their way along the mountain paths, towards the point where Ivan had recently sketched his much talked of picture. At times, the two wayfarers disappeared altogther beneath the over-arching pme trees or behind the projecting spurs of the nearer mountains ; at times, they stood forth again upon some rocky ledge, or showed themselves for a moment in strong relief against the cold grey background of the northern sky-line. But whenever they were visible one thing was clear ; they were always talking away together with the same evident interest, animation, and vividness as ever. Olwen could easily make out with the glass the very movements of Seeta Mayne's impetuous hand, and the rapid gesticulation of her arms and her alpenstock. They were enjoying their talk immensely, no doubt ; two such clever talkers are always sure to appreciate one another, and to get on swim- mingly in conversation together. By-and-by, Mohammad Ali set out the lunch, and they ate their sandwiches and drank their claret on their rocky couch, laughing and talking more merrily now beneath the open sky, and with that grand panorama of sea and mountain stretched ever before them in glorious perspective. After lunch, & beautiful bunch of crimson anemones hanging out from a cleft of rock on the slope opposite attracted for a moment Olwen's eye, .-^nd she cried to Ivan in a careless way, ** How pretty they are ! I should like to have them." At the word, the two young men darted off with one accord to fetch the flowers. They ran lightly down the slope of the valley and up the opposite bank, in evidont emulation, eager each to secure the prize before the other could reach it. Mohammad Ali was the first to pick them ; be was a lighter and nimbler man tlian Ivan. Olwen was pleased ; she preferred the Indian should get them rather tlian the Englishman. On the way back, at the bottom of tlio slope, Ali paused for a second and looked hard at Ivan. *' This is a bad business, Royle," he said, waving Iiis hand towards Olwen, with profound distress in every line of his countenance. ** Wb»t buimow Y" Iv»o (mk«d, m\j half undetitHnUing him, (•rhii 106 THE devil's DIB. perceptions were far less quick and instantaneous than his oriental companion's. " Why, this business between Chichele and Miss Mayne," the Indian answered slowly. *' I see danger signals looming ahead. A red light on the starboard bow. And what's worse, Mrs. Chichele herself sees them too. Sees them, and is already very much alarmed at them." Ivan Royle stopped and glanced at him astonished. " Seeta Mayne's the haughtiest woman on earth," he said shortly. '*She moves on a very high plane. No man that lives dare ever speak one single word or syllable amiss to her. I don't think 01 , Mrs. Chichele, I mean — need trouble herself about that matter. Seeta's as cold as ice and as proud as Lucifer." *' So I see," the Indian answered, with the calm confidence ot a priori conviction. '* I'm not in the least afraid on that score. The plane on which she moves is indeed an ideal one. I only tremble for her influ- ence on Harry." Ivan answered never a word. He only pondered by himself mutely. They walked back in silence to the isolated rock where Olwen sat, and Mohammad Ali handed her the anemones with his stately bow of orien- tal courtesy. Olwen received them with a sweet smile of cordial recog- nition — a smile that Ivan Royle fairly envied him. *' I think Miss Mayne is flashing to us," she said as she took them ; "at least, I see the light of a mirror coming and going very often, Mr. Royle." ** So she is," Ivan cried, shading his eyes with his hand, and gazing northward. *' I can see it distinctly. And what's more, she's half*way through her message now. Two dots and a dash ; that's I, you know. Then comes e, a, n, d, t, a, r, e, g, o, i, n, gf," and he spelt out the mess- age letter by letter, writing it down in pencil as he went, on the back of an envelope. *' Here's what I make it," he said at last, handing the envelope with its inscription across to Olwen. '* * le and I are going down direct to Agay Station. Later than we thought. No time to return for you to the summit. ' The first words are missing ; but, of course, she means ' Dr. Chichele.' They won't come back for us, that's plain ; and wo must start soon, too, if we want to catch the 3.40 home again." He gave his hand, as he spoke with a smile, to Olwen, who took it at once with the tips of her fingers, all too lightly, and tried to descend with an easy jump or two from the summit of the pinnacle. But tha crannies in which she had to put her little feet were damp and treach- erous with moss and mould. She missed her foothold in the first she tried, and stumbling at the mishap, fell slightly, with only the tip of Ivan's hand to keep her from falling over bodily. In a second, Mo- hammad Ali had leaped from the top on to the ground below — a dan- gerous jump for one less lithe than he — and clambering up the side in breathless haste, he gave Olwen the chance of supporting herself with her hand upon his sturdy shoulder. Olwen steadied herself thus with great difficulty, and allowed the Indian to help her in his arms down to the bottom. As soon as she felt herself on firm ground again, sh« fliftt down ou the bare rock with Qvery mftck of paio in b«r twitohiay THB DEYIL^S DIl. 107 face. ** Fve huri my ankle," she said, holding her foot out straight in a rigid attitude. " I'm almost afraid I must have sprained it. Itaohet dreadfully. What am I to do, so far from home, and with Harry away, too, up there among the mountains 1 " Mohammad Ali, doctor as he was, did not dare to presume upon hi* professional character even to examine that small dainty foot of hen. *' Let us wait awhile," he said, bending over her eagerly, *' and see if it gets better soon of itself. It may be only a passing wrench. A few minutes' rest often sets an injury of that sort all right again." But in this particular case a few minutes' rest did nothing of the sort, nor at all like it. On the contrary, when Olwen tried to move it again some moments later, she gave a sudden little cry of sharp pain, and screwed up her face once more in evident agony. "Can you move it, so?" Mohammad Ali asked in much anxiety, twisting his own foot with his hand a little freely in the socket. Olwen tried with her own fingers. '* Oh no," she answered, almost crying with pain ; "it hurts me horribly. It's awfully bad. There •eems to be something there that's strained or contracted." Mohammad Ali looked hard at Ivan. " Royle," he said, " this is a serious injury. The joint's sprained, there can be no doubt of that. Stop you here with Mrs. Chichelo, please. I'll go down to Agay and borrow an invalid chair to carry her down in. On no account must she walk upon it in her present condition." " Hadn't I better go ? " Ivan asked, dubiously. '* I know the people, and can get anything I want from them. " **.A7"o,' Mohammad Ali answered, with a firm decision in his clear voice, which made Ivan feel at once he had some perfectly good and sufficient reason for what he said. *' My French will carry me through venr well for all I want, thank you. It will be better so. Stop here with Mrs. Chichele till 1 come again." And before Ivan or Olwen could say anything further or change his plan, the Indian was off, with his light and rapid oriental step, bounding like a chamois down the slopes of the mountain. Ivan vaguely recognized in his own mind that Ali was right in hie course of action. If Olwen must stop alone for an hour with any man on the lonely mountain tops, it was best she should stop not with the Indian, but with her own fellow-countryman. Being a black man cuts both ways.. There are times and seasons when it counts for a perfect automatic protection from Mrs. Grundy, and there are times when it serves to call forth the severest and profoundest comments of that dreadful potentate of Seeta Mayne's special detestation. Mohammad Ali had judged aright at once by instinct. Ivan Royle, following him at a distance by the slower and dimmer light of reason instead, con- cluded at last on the whole that he had acted wisely. But what an hour of torture and suspense that wise action of hit entailed upon both of them in their awkward shyness 1 They were both self-oonscioiiB, and both endeavoured to hide their self-conscious- ness, which of all gratnitou« forms of deception known to humanity is tke lOMt »bsoltttely transparent and the must utterly luUle. I7U» 10$ THE DKTIL'S DIt. dared not even steal a glance sideways afc poor blushing Olwen ; he dared not look her straight in the face, and he dared not let her see that he dared not. Now and again their eyes met timidly on neutral ground, as it were, for a second ; and then they both let them drop again with a sudden awkwardness, and pretended not to notice that they had either of them observed it. A dozen times one or other exclaimed, in i> wearied-out, nervous, half-peevish way, " I wonder when they'll bring that chair up 1 " At last, after they had fairly exhausted the resources of common- place, and were racking their brains for anything else of absolute inanity and harmless platitude, to fill up the gaps in their languishing conver- sation, they saw Mohammad Ali hurrying up the slope, with a couple of porters, bearing between them an invalid chair, borrowed in haste from the occupants of a villa down below ai Agay. At the sight Ivan breathed again freely for the first time since Ali left him. They put Olwen into the chair, and Ali and Ivan assisted the porters in carrying her down, t^ ensure against a fall as well aa against any unnecessary jerking or shaking of the injured limb. At the station, of course, they were too late for the train they had originally intended to catch, and they saw no sign of Harry and Seeta. A monsieur and a grand lady had gone off by the preceding train, the station-master told them ; the monsieur had just come up at the last moment to take his tickets, and had jumped into a carriage on the point of departure, inquiring whether two other gentleman and an English lady had already arrived there. So Ali and Ivan set down Olwen in the bare little waiting-room at the tiny gare^ still seated in her chair, and patiently attended the 5.20 train. Meanwhile, Harry and Seeta, in blissful ignorance of all that was happening, had "trod the mountain heights together," much to their own mutual and internal satisfaction. They had walked along the path to the Nook, sometimes pausing to pick a flower or admire the view, sometimes strolling idly by the ledges of the rock, sometimes buried in the profound shade of the pine trees, but always deep in conversa- tion with one another on topics that seemed to come and go with all the varied and lightening-like rapidity of a clever woman's many-sided mind. So they strolled on, oblivious of the time, and full only of themselves and of one another. At the Nook itself, a beautiful little gorge, deep among the rocks and woods, and thick with flowers, Harry drew back suddenly with a start of recognition. "Ivan Royle ia not the only artist who has painted this bit," he said quickly, with a glance at her face and a deep-drawn breath of evident admiration. ' ' I recognize it at once. I have seen it before, drawn by a far more delicate and poeti- cal brush than even Royle himself can wield. I should have known it anywhere, no matter how or when 1 came upon it." "Indeed," Seeta cried, flushing up with pleasure, yet half in doubt itUl as to whether he really meant it. " Where have you seen it 't At the Academy, perhaps, or in the Paris Salon ? " **No," Harry answered, with a shi^ke of his head and a rosponsiv* TBI DV7ID'| Btl. lOi tnnilt. " In a far more gracious gallery than eHher. In * The Price of Wisdom.' I see at a glance this is the very spot where your hero reveak the secret of his heart to Gladys Trevelyan. " *' It is," Seeta replied, with that pleased thrill that an author always feels at the slightest touch of personal recognition. ** I'm glad yom know the place again. I took great pains when I drew that scene witb my little background — only a touch or two, yet chosen, I thought, with effective selection. A stroke, well chosen, I often think, may put a whole view before the reader's mind." *' Clearly," Harry answered ; " otherwise, how could I recognize hi Why, here are the very lichens on the joints of the rocka, and here'i the great red ice-worn boulder that Gladys sat upon with her poor little heart throbbing and fluttering, while Owen told her the story of hii hopeless passion. It's a beautiful scene — a wonderful scene. I don'l know th;^t any scene in all fiction has ever stirred me or thrilled me more profoundly." "Than this viewl" Seeta suggested, with intentional misundev- standing. *' Miss Mayne 1 How can you ? You must take me for a stone. And you, too, who yourself created it 1 If any one else had said such a thing as that to me, I would have called him an insensible block of marble 1 No, not this view, but that delicious scene in *' The Price of Wisdom,' where Owen breaks his love so gently to dear little Gladys. When I came to those terrible, crushing words, * Gladys, Gladys, I cannot marry you 1 I'm married already t ' the tears rose hot and irrepressible in my eyes, and I could have cried for hours for the hope- less misery of those two poor unhappy young lovers." Seeta gazed at him long and straight. Her delicate nostrils quivered and dilated. Her eyes flashed fire, and then fell again for a moment. His obvious appreciation made her heart flutter. At last she raised her eyelids once more, and looked him full in the face for a second. **Let us have our lunch. Dr. Chichele," she said outright, with cold matter-of-fact calmness, in a clear, unconcerned straightforward fashion. Nothing she could have said would have shown him more fully how much she was aflected by his praise of her story. It was a transparent subterfuge — she meant it as such. He had touched her on a very tender spot. She wished him to see it. She did not dare to continua the conversation. They both started and looked away in haste. Seeta threw herself down gracefully on tiie grass beside the big red boulder. Harry pulled from his pocket his wicker-covered flask, and drawing off the silver cup at the bottom, filled it with claret and handed it to Seeta. She took it graciously, with a responsive nod, and holding a sandwich daintily between her delicate finger and thumb — even a sandwich became instinct with poetry in Seeta Mayne's beautiful hands — she drained off the claret at a single long draught, with an action like H}iat of some sculptured nymph or picturesque bacchante. Then, smi ig at Hany bar moat charming smile, she stretchcc^ ou^ h^ b«acl lor the flask het- 110 TRK DiyiL*8 Dim ■elf and poured him out a cupful of the sparkling \rine in return, with the very manner of a marble Hebe. In passing it over, she handed it to him naturally with the other side of the cup turned towards him from that out of which she had herself drunk ; but it did not escape her quick eye that Harry turned the vessel carefully round, so as to let his own lips touch where hers had touched before him. The little act of homage naturally pleased her. Harmless homage to a beautiful woman. A beautiful woman expects as much, and accepts it as her due, who- ' ever pays it to h-^r. After a while, Harry drew his watch carelessly from his pocket. "By Jove," he cried, ** how the time's gone ! It flies, indeed, in such converse. We shall miss the train, I'm afraid. It's past two, I declare, already." *' There's another way down," Seeta answered lightly, not without a certain smile of inward contentment. " I'll flash to Ivan to meet us ab the station. It'll give us longer for our talk together ; and, after all, for conversation, two is really the ideal number. " She drew the little mirror from her reticuk as she spoke, and flashed her message with rapid precision across to the pinnacle. Presently, as they sat there still on the grass, Harry began again about " The Price of Wisdom " and her other books. But Seeta, for her part, rather avoided the subject than otherwise. " Don't let's talk about my work," she said at last, proudly, with a half-contemptuous toss of her queenly head, and a haughty shrug of her imperial shoulders, ** Let's talk about yours, please. Dr. Chichele. Don't pay me the bad compliment of taking me for a mere novelist — of supposing I think my own poor small line of authorship can compare for a moment in worth and importance with the deep things of thought or philosophy. I try to attain what perfection I can, to be sure, in my own petty and shallow department of art ; but I know well enough that when all's said and done, art itself is simply nowhere by the side of science, the profound, the immeasurable." "I'm not so sure of that," Harry answered, flattered, and therefore disposed to be generously self-depreciative. *' Imagination's a marvel- lous faculty in its own way. The ability to fill an ideal world with high creations of one's own formative and constructive fancy appear* to me, I confess, one of the greatest and deepest endowments of genius. For example, when I read * Penora * and ' The Price of Wisdom,' for my own part, I stand aghast and astonished and humbled before it." *' No, no," Seeta cried, waving her hand in contradiction, and warm- ing up as she spoke into one of her wild rhapsodical humours. *' You're wrong. Dr. Chichele. Imagination's all very well in its way, no doubt, but the power to discover and to recognize the great underlying truthi of nature is an immeasurably higher and nobler faculty. Man stands face to face in the last resort with an infinite univesse, a system of suns, the outcome of a vast and illimitable energy. What is man, I wonder, among the atoms and the systems ? What is woman, I wonder, among the eternities and the infinities ? A speck, a dot, a nothing, an iota. The philosopher looks forth with keen glance aorou the immeaaunbU THI DEYIL'8 DII. Ill abysses of time and dpace, and sees the formless waste of chaos slowlj setting into suns and stars and rings and planets. He sees life unfold- ing by tentative steps on the cooling surface of some petty world. He sees and knows in its own essence the very heart and core of things mundane and spiritual, as physic and metaphysic combine to show it to him. And then, at the very moment when my vision aches with the yastness of the space and the length of the time he unfolds before me — you come, you, a man of science yourself — to tell me, with your pleasant condescending smile, that the power of inventing a pretty little story about how a nice little man falls in love with a nice little girl, and after many vicissitudes finally marries or does not marry her (which ia at bottom, of course, the alternative framework of all possible or actual romances), outweighs in value these wonderful faculties of yours for beholding and conceiving the inmost facts and realities of nature ! If you expect me to believe you, you must take me for a proud, conceited fool. No, no, I'll hear no more about it, from you or from any man 1 A friend once told me that George Eliot was in his eyes a much greater genius than Herbert Spencer ; and I conceived at once a very low opinion of my friend's intelligence. Despise me, if you like, as a woman, a trifler, a mere novelist ; but don't, at least, suppose I have no soul superior to novel-writing. Do me the honour to think me at any rate api)reciative of better things. I know what is great whenever I find it ; I know what is great, and I worship it accordingly." And she looked up at him from the grass where she lay, with the worship pouring forth most intoxicatingly from those great gray eyes of here, and that exalted languishing far-away expression on her face which sometimes comes to beautiful women in their supremest moments. If Olwen could only have seen them just then as she sat far below with Ivan by the foot of the rock, it would not have been her ankle alone that ached and pained her. Her heart would have felt a sudden wrench. Those two were, indeed, treadiug the mouutaiu height! together. CHAPTER XXL Harby Chichels was in his element. Seeta suited him. Th« Incense of that beautiful woman's subtle flattery, so profound, so intense, so impersonal, so eloquently expressed, mounted up like the fumes of wine to his heated brain, and fairly turned his head with its inebriating influence. He could have sat there for ever and listened to Seeta's views upon himself and the universe — if he had not had to go back at 3.4'">, t ) Canm ■ and to Olwen. " Come," he exclaimed at last, rising slowly from hia moss-grown •oat by the boulder, with his watch cradled in the hollow of hia hand. ** We must be moving now. I've been counting the minutes. II Wf d on 't li MJ gy wo shall miss them ali down yondw at Agi^,** 118 THB DBVIL'b DIB. Seeta ronsed herself at the word from the infinities and eternities j shook off the Cosmos with a graceful movement of her loose skirts ; brought back her eyes from the abysses of air ; and returned with a start to solid earth on the flanks of the Esterel. She had been pervad- ing space ; she must now return to Cannes and dinner. At the railway at Agay they failed to find 01 wen and her two com- panions ; but arriving at the very last moment them! elves, they jumped in hastily and went home together by the 3.40 train, fully expecting to meet their party from another carriage at the Cannes StKbion. No Olwen yet appearing, however, they walked up to the hotel, still tete-a- tetty without much misgiving, for Harry did not suspect any harm had come to his wife with such efficient guides as Ali and Ivan. As they neared the hotel he turned to Seeta and observed with a sigh, ** This has been a very delightful outing. I'm sorry it's over. What a glorious introduction a day in the country is together 1 To think that you and I only met yesterday, and yet to-day we're old friends already." " True," Seeta answered. ** But chance alone is only half the secret. We needed no introduction to one another. You knew me before in my books ; I knew you before in your scientific discoveries. That's the best of the orbit in which such people as you and I revolve. The world at large, when it meets its peers, has slowly to pick up by vague side hints, a bit at a time, something about their tastes, their ideas, their habits, their opinions. You and I, when we first cross one an- other's path, meet with our acquaintance already more than half formed; we know one another in part by anticipation. A thousand traits of character and thought are familiar to start with ; a thousand modes of expression strike upon one's ears with the pleasing and delightful ring of long-standing acquaintanceship. " •*But our walk, too, has brought us very much nearer together," Harry went on reflectively. " I feel now as if I had known you always. You wem like somebody I've met for years past." ** Ko doubt," Seeta replied. " It is the same with me. I have indeed gained a friend. That's a rare gain in life, Dr. Chichele. I have made but few. You are one of them. I knew beforehand you would be from what I had read of you." "And yet," Harry mused, ** our lines lie so very far apart." " That's nothing." Seeta answered, lifting her eyes once more. " We are akin for all that. Thought always sympathizes with thought." She spoke sincerely, and flooded him, as she loved to do, with the glory of her great grey eyes. A woman novelist specially values the esteem of those whom she regards as men of scientific and philosophical eminence. She doesn't wish to be considered a mere story-teller. She wants the applause of real thinkers. The evident admiration of Dr. Chichele, the professor of aetiology, and great authority on microbes and germs and epidemic diseases, flattered Seeta Mayne to the top of her bent every bit as much as the evident admiration of Seeta Mayne, the beautiful woman and distinguished novelist, flattered and deliglited y*rry CluohelQf Each was particularly pleased wjtjl ^P otlier'i ho»»g»j THB devil's 91K 113 to each it was the exact form of appreciation which most closely touched his or her own profoundest vein of personal vanity. At the hotel door, a waiter met them with a telegram in his hand. " For monsieur," he said. Harry op^sned it and glanced through it hastily. It gave him a sudden shock of surprise. *' Mrs. Chichele has sprained her ankle badly. Return next train. Meet us. Ali," In a moment he had forgotton all about Seeta, and her ideas and experiences, and was hurrying back at full speed to the railway station to see if he could get another train back to Agay before the one by which Olwen was to arrive had yet started. There was none, however, and he was forced to possess his soul in what patience he might, loung- ing about in the hall of the station meanwhile, till Olwen's train should reach Cannes. Ho' reproached himself very bitterly now for his remissness in not having waited on the sumnxit with Olwen. How unkind she would think him ever to have left her ; how much more unkind not to have returned to her after the accident. If only he had stopped for her at Agay Station even. But there was no help for it now. What was done was done. A little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, had risen up between himself and Olwen. When the train arrived he helped her tenderly home to the hotel ; he bandaged and bathed the sprained limb with infinite care and gentle- ness himself ; he lavished upon her every attention that either his medical skill or his personal affectirn could possibly suggest to him ; but all the time he felt dimly conscious in the back-ground of his mind of the cloud that had risen up so subtly between them. Neither said a word about it. Olwen certainly never dreamt of reproaching him , she was too deeply hurt in her own soul to think of reproaches. She only murmured many times over, " I did so wish you'd been with me, Harry. " A.nd Harry without attempting to apologize or excuse him- self, answered in the same simple direct manner, " I wish I had been, darling ; I do most earnestly wish I had been." The Riviera is always beautiful, always bright, always delightful, al- ways sunshiny ; but for the remainder of Olwen Chichele's stay at Cannes it was clouded over in her eyes by that little cloud, no bigger at first than a man's hand, but gradually growing and spreading and thickening, till at last it covered with its skirts her whole private mental horizon, and darkened for her all that lovely prospect, from the rocks of St. Tropez to the palm groves of Bordighera. To begin with, her sprain confined her for the most part to the hotel ; and although Harry had her moved to a room on the ground floor, which opened out by French windows on to the garden terrace where she could look across to the sea and the islands, still it was woary lying there on the sofa all day and gazing out even on that exquisite prospect of trees and water. Harry wheeled the sofa on to the terrace at times, and Ivan and Ali hovered about, ever eager and watchful to do her bidding ; but at the very moment when the sun was brightest, and the birds were singing their blitheat among the laden oleanders, Seeta Mayne would Itroll casually ftcroM tlk§ gardens towards them, book in hand &n4 fin£«f 114 TBI diyil's Dn. in page, and in a trice the cloud would would rise up as if by maglo once more, and cover the heavens from side to side with its thick pall of outer darkness. It was very wrong of her, Olwen said to herself ; and yet, with a woman's instinct, she could not help it She scented danger afar off on the breezes long before either Seeta or Harry him- self had the faintest suspicion of its possible presence. Then again, Harry could not, of course, be always by her side. He was very good to her, very constant, very gentle, very attentive : but she couldn't bear to spoil his hard-earned holiday for him, and she in- sisted at times that he should certainly leave her and go for walks with the other men among the hills and mountains. On such occasions Seeta sometimes stopped at home and kept her company ; but sometimes, on the other hand, she went with Harry and her cousin — or, rather, they all four started together, to find themselves paired off by natural selec- tion into couples before long, the first couple being always Harry and Seeta, while the second waa Ivan and Mohammad Ali. Olwen hardly knew which of the two alternatives she disliked the most ; for, when Seeta Mayne stopped at home, she often talked to poor bewildered Olwen wholly above her head, vague rhapsodies about life and love, or else profound philosophical discussions : and when she went out, why, then, of course, she went out with Harry. And the bitterest part of it all was that even Olwen herself could not help admiring, nay, even in some strange under-current of feeling positively liking and almost lov- ing Seeta Mayne. A very little, to say the truth, would have made Olwen actually worship her prospective rival. Seeta was so beautiful, she was so graceful, she was so clever, she was so interesting, and at times, when Olwen was in pain or weary, she was so really and truly kind and sympathetic. From her lofty pedestal, indeed, she condes- cended in turn to like and admire and love Olwen. A dear, pretty, simple, little thing, and so thoroughly womanly, too, in every thought and act and feeling I But so utterly unsuited, when one looked at it that way, to a man of Dr. Ohichele's mental calibre 1 As for Harry, he enjoyed to the full his rambles on the mountain slopes with Seeta. She knew by sight every rare flower on the Riviera, and the exact spots where they all grew ; and the desire to show them to Harry and Ivan gave an excuse for more than one long excursion among the hills that stretched back from the winter city. How they rambled and talked among those lovely hills ; now they gazed entranced over sea and mountain ; how they gathered wild flowers among the spurs of the Esterel ; how they discussed the govern- ment of earth and heaven. And what occupations can be more danger- ous to the slippery and unstable human heart than rambling in the hills, looking at the mountains, talking philosophy, and gatnering wild flowers with a beautiful woman ? Scenery and poetry are very closely akin to love ; the talk about one glides off imperceptibly into talk about the other, and lands you, whert you know not, before you have even s<* much as dreamt of it. Moreover, Seeta was both by trade and by nature introspective and analytic. She thought aud talked mu9h t^bout the people with whom TBI devil's DIB. 119 ■h« was conversing, and their inmost feelings and characteristica. Therefore she thought and talked much with Harry Chichele about their two salves. To talk about your two selves is always fascinating, and always interesting ; it allows so much scope for subtle flattery and delicato egotism : but it is also always perilous and always compli> eating ; it leads you for ever on thin ice, over which to glide lightly and gracefully, is in itself a delicious exercise of supreme skill. Harry and Sedta enjoyed that dangerous amusement together to the full ; they saturated themselves with mutual self-analysis ; they frankly dis- cussed their own two personalities ; they laid themselves bare with perfect freedom before one another's scrutinizing and admiring gaze. They intoxicated themselves with the joy of dissecting their own inmosl and profoundest nature. It is always delightful to t^!k about one's self to a uympathetio lii- tener, especially when that listener is a beautiful woman. " I've enjoyed these walks immensely, Dr. Chichele," Seeta said on* day with a quiet sigh, as Harry's holiday was drawing at last to its cloa*. •' They have been for me a new sensation. I live so much out of the world of thought. I mix for the most part only with the commonplace. To meet with minds fresh from the centre of things — cells in the very growing-point of science, as it were— has given me a delightful and novel interest in life, and the friendship we have formed in these few weeks at Cannes will last us out in future, I hope, for a whole life" time." Harry Chichele looked down at her with profound admiration. ** I can see now," he said, *' who wrote ' The Price of Wisdom,' and how she gained the knowledge to write it. What a wonderful insight into our minds you possess. You read human hearts like an open book, Miss Mayne." Seeta smiled again. *' Every man to his trade," she answered Ughtly. '* It i: no sin, as Falstaff says, to labour in '"'^«'s vocation. My vocation is to probe and search out the hidden nooi:> and crannies of the heart of man. I paint the human soul as Ivan Royle paints a landscape — in minute detail, as the result of patient care and study." *'And you've studied mine now, I suppose, and done with it for ever," Harry cried, half regretfully. *' You've taken stock of your model and got to the very bottom of its small nature. You'll throw me away next like a sucked orange." ** That would argue very bad art indeed," Seeta answered with » grave face " To the true artist, no study on earth is ever quite com- plete or final. Have you or your fellows yet finished knowing all about the mere bodily structure and functions of man — his earthly mechanism — his anatomy and physiology — his wheels, and cranks, and works, and mainsprings ? Do you know, right through, his heart, and his lungi^ and his brain, and his muscles ? No, nor ever will either. And how infinitely more varied and diverse and unknowable are the tunes we can get out of a human soul — an organ of many pipes, with endless stops and variants and diapasons — the outcome of a million years of •volution." Her Toioe fell a moment to a lower koj. ** My slndy i» 116 THB DBTIL'b DIB. only just begun," ihe said softly. •' We shall meet again, I hopd. Elsewhere. Often." "Thank you," Harry replied, with a deep thrill, and said no more. They walked along some minutes together in ailenoe. Silence is tk« most eloquent of human voices. Nothing on earth can say so much. It speaks the heart in its most unutterable moods and symphonies. During the last week of their stay at Cannes, 01 wen was so Urn recovered that she could drive out in an open carriage, and Harry and Seeta generally drove out with her, Ivan and All walking in the sams direction, and meeting them by appointment at their journey's end. Olwen really enjoyed these drives immensely, along the sweeping ourv« of coast to the roadstead at Golfe Jouan, or by the rocky dells, starred with purple and scarlet anemones, to the beautiful potteries at deep- throated Yallauris. It was so delightful to go out with Seeta. Seeta talked to her charmingly now. Olwen, too, was numbered among her victims. The first flush of the younger woman's terror at the great novelist's cleverness and superciliousness had begun to wear off, and Olwen almost ventured to chat and gossip naturally at last with her alarming acquaintance about the usual nothings of feminine conversa- tion. Seeta was trying hard to win her heart, and when Seeta Mayne found it worth her while to take that easy trouble with anybody on earth, the somebody, as a rule, fell a willing prey to the graceful woman's gracious condescension. The famous novelist had come down off her pedestal, in fact — at least as far as Olwen was concerned — and was doing her best to be charming and agreeable. Seeta's best waa good indeed ; and Olwen felt herself flattered and pleased accordingly. They got on famously together now. Olwen was almost in love with Seeta. Besides, next week it would all be over, and she would hare Harrj •very bit to herself again at home in Hampstead. That thought in itself nerved her up and delighted her. The cloud after all was but a passing shadow. Seeta had come and Seeta would go again ; but she herself, Olwen, like the open blue sky, at the back of it all, remained for ever in Harry's heart as permanent background of married happiness. So it is in every true man's heart. So it would be Olwen felt, in her own with Harry. So it must be, therefore, she argued, for her in Harry's. They were driving along on their laat whole day at Cannes by th« beautiful water-side road among the great umbrella pines in the Frejua direction. It was a glorious day. The simshine overhead waa bright and unbroken ; the sunshine within was growing clear and cloudleas again. "And so to-morrow we shall leave dear old Cannes behind forever," Olwen said with a sigh, as she turned to Seeta. She really loved tha place to-day. it was so bright and gay and calm and beautiful. "And you '^oo, Miss Mayne ! We shall have to leave yoa. Whoa shall we ■ee you again, I wonder I ** VMB DSTIL'8 DIl. 117 " In April," Seeta answered, locking up »t her luddenly. •* In London. I shall bo there with the tulips and the swallows. I mean henceforth to come to England every year for the summer." Olwen glanced at her sideways, half in doubt, as she leaned back uneasily on the cushions of the carriage. *' I thought," she cried, with a vague surmise of breakers ahead, '* you never cared for London •ociety." *' I did not," Seeta answered, with a stately inclination of her proud head ; *' that id to say, I did not, till recently. I've now found out new interests in London, It means to me * . t^ than it meant of old. I shall come to England frequently in future. England is nearer and dearer to me to-day than it ever was in all my life before." •* Why ? " Olwen asked, with an uncomfortable glance. *' My dear little woman, how can you ask me why?" Seeta echoed good-humouredly, ' ' While you are in London, how can my heart keep long away from it ? Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. I have found new treasures in England, new friends who will always be very, very dear to me." She smiled at Olwen so sweet and so genuine a smile of affection as ■ho spoke that Olwen almost tried to conceal from herself the chagrin and disappointment with which she received this flattering avowal of eternal friendship. CHAPTER XXIL . ^ Fkbruary, March, and half April passed pleasantly and easily enough in L(»ndon with Olwen Chichele. Ivan Royle and Mohammad Ali were both in town, and both were, as always, her obedient servants, for ever ready to do her bidding gladly. Harry had forgotten all about Seeta Mnyne— for the present at leost — and was assiduous in taking his pretty little wife about everywhere and ^showing her everything. Olwen had become a recownized feature in scientific society by this time. Everybody liked the charming little woman whose head had not been turned by society's admiration, and who was such a capital foil in a drawing-room, you know, to all those stiff old professors, and philosophical theory-monf^ers, and cultivated Girton girls of the modem pattern. Towards the end of April, however, as Harry and she were driving one through that long last night. He could never have believed that a •ingle day could embrace so many distinct etemitiM. 174 ' ' THE DEVIL'S DIE. The slowest hours wear by at last. At nine o'clock the attack was at its worst. Unless it mended, collapse must set in. The crisis in these cases was always short and sharp and certain. Harry could see it drawing on now. It was here I It was here I The supreme momenl had actually come. A few minutes now would fairly decide it. They stood and watched, Secta and he and the brother-doctor, for ten minutes together, with profound anxiety. The suspense was such as none of them had ever known before. Then Olwen opened Ler eyea (dimly a moment. *' I'm going," she said. *' Good-bye. Harry." A tierce temptest swept at the word through Harry Chichele's wearied soul. He knelt down by her bed, and seizi d her hand fervently in his. " Olwen," he cried, covering it with kisses, "my Olwen, my Olwen 1 You mustn't 1 You mustn't ! You'll kill me I You'll kill me ! Come back, my darling 1 Oh, for heaven's sake, don't say so, Olwen 1 " The other doctor motif med him gently away. *' Air," he whispered. *• Plenty of fresh air. It's her one chance. Stand away there, all ot you. Let her have plenty of room, for heaven's sake. Dr. Ali, give me that bottle please, will you ? " Mohammad Ali handed it to him without a word. For the first time then Harry saw that his enemy had glided noiselcsslj^ into the rdom, unable any longer to conceal his anxiety, and was standing like night at his wife's bed beside him. He could have choked the black man at that moment with his hands for daring to intrude upon him at ruch a crisis. ** Hush," the <;t1ier doctor whispered once more. *' She's moving again ! She's better 1 She's better I Quiet, quiet. It's passiikg oflF. There's no collapse. She's easier now. She'o coming round. We shall save her. We shall save her ! " One unanimous cry burst forth in unison from all three of their lips — Seeta's, Mohammad All's, and Harry Chichele's. *' Thank God ! " they cried in a single breath, and each of the three cried it fervently. Afl the night wore on, Olwen's condition gradually im[)roved. The disease, indeed, is always startling in the rapidity of its transitions. It comes and goes like a thief in the night. As soon as the crisis is once fairly over, things begin to mend, and to mend rajiidly. 13y two in the morning she was decidedly better, and Sceta, leaning over the bed, observed her face growing every moment more and more natural in hue and expression. Still, Harry kept looking anxiously at his watch. As half-past two a[)proached, his anxiety became once more intense. He held his eyes fixed so firmly on Seeta that Seeta at last began to wonder what he could mean by it. ** Are you waiting for anything ? " she AnkcC at length, turning to- wards him inquiringly. Harry's lips quivered with a violent effort at self-repression. •* Yes," he faltered out, in a tremulous voice, *' I'm waiting for the crisis." "For tho crisis ? " Seetii cried in an eager undertone. "Is thero ■till a crisis ? I thought it w:ia past. You don't mean to lay there's another, then, still to come, is there t " THE devil's DIB. 175 ** Not for her, my child," Harry answered hoarsely. *• Hot for her. Kot for her ; she's all safe now. Not for Olwen. But for yourself, Seeta." His face was pitiful to behold as he said it, so profound were the marks of anguish and terror depicted upon it. " Seeta looked up at him with a start of surprise. " Why, wliat do you mean, Harry ? " she asked, astonished. " Why should you think any harm would come to me ? " " It was twelve when you kissed her," Harry answertid with an effort. "In fourteen hours and a half that virus matures. I've seen it do so in ^wo cases already. If you pass three o'clock without adverse sytaptoms, all will be well with you. If not, heaven help oa 1 it'a all up with us." Seeta's cheek palud slightly, but she answered nothing. Sh« merely turned to Olwen once more, stooped tenderly over the bed where she lay quite still, and kissed her twice again on her white forehead. She did it on purpose. Wliat had she to fear from death if it came ? Life to her was of little worth now. She would gladly give it up in nursing Olwen. That would at least be some little expiation, and Seeta felt that expiation was indeed needed oven for her. She did not know how infinitely more it was needed for Harry. Harry moved restlessly in his chair each minute. He could stand this horrible suspeT'se no longer. He muHt take something to keep up his nerve. He went downstairs to the dining-room for brandy. On the stops he surprised Lizbeth, half awake and half asleep, sitting by herself upon the mat by the drawing-room door. Lizbeth followed him like a dog down the stairs, and entered the dining-room after him mysteriously. *' What do you want ? " Harry asked, turning round upon her sharply with tlie decanter in his hand. '^ I want to speak with you about the Blackamoor," Lizbeth answered in a c(jnfidential tone. " The Bhickamoor 1 " Harry cried, with a sudden burst of interest. *' Dr. Moharninad Ali 1 Why, wliat on earth have you got to say about him at such a time as this, Lizbeth ? " " Enough to 'ang 'im," Lizbeth replied with grim delight. Harry started. What on eartli could this meari ? " Enough to hang him," he repeats J, incredulously. *' I don't understand you." " It was 'im as done it," Lizbeth went on, in a soft undertone. **I seen 'im myself. I seen 'im do it." " Do wliat? " Harry asked, with increasing hope. " Muddle up the geruis as you put in the laborritory. When you was gone, *e went meddlin' an' muddlin' with 'em, an' puttin' things where you 'adn't put 'em, and mixin' up t'le cholerer and the morphlft bottles, any 'ow.' A yleam of hope came across Harry's mind. *' You saw him do it f " he cried eagerly. ** Yes, 1 saw 'im do it. I was 'id in the dark room, an' '• came baok, 176 THE devil's DIB. - after you was gone, a-stealin' in, all soft on 'is tip-toes, like them Black- amoors does" —and Lizbeth imitated Mohammad Ali to the life — " an' 'e took the glasses, an' ungumined the labels witli bilin' water, an' put 'em all on the wrong things and mixed 'em up with morphia an' stulF; an' it's my belief" — here Lizbeth's eyes gleamed horribly — "that *e did it just a-purpose to murder her." Harry 8 eyes gleamed back in response. Begum Johanna's tiger-like glare came out in them at once with a fierce light. '* You can swear to this ? " he asked, with savage joy. I "I can take my Bible oath to it in a court of justice," Lizbeth ' answered, thrilling inwardly ; " if I was to drop down dead this minit before you, 1 swear I could swear to it." A fresh hope rose buoyant once more in Harry's mind. If only he had known this six hours earlier — before the crisis 1 He had Moham- mad Ali in his power now ! Plot and counterplot ! Mine and counter- mine 1 Lizbeth was still too much for the Blackamoor ! He questioned her closely in every detail, but she stuck to her story througliout with perfect confidence. He was sure it was true. Ali had tried to mix up his infusions. She must have caught the infection, after all, by accident. He waa not a murderer 1 He was not a murderer I It was all ft mistake 1 It was all accident I On his way upstairs again, he opened the drawing-room door quietly. The gas was alight, and Mohammad Ali was pacing up and down the room with clasped hands, waiting still for the latest news of Olwen. He started as Harry opened the door ; but his anxiety made him ask for news, even from her guilty husband. " How ia she now?" ho intjuired eagerly. Harry, too, started in turn. He was asking himself just then whether Seeta had taken the disease, and forgot for the moment aU about Olwen. ** Better," he said, recovering himself slowly. *' Bufc I hat is not what I came to speak about. Mohammad Ali, I know now w hy you bandy about accusations of murder. I know now why you t'eel so deeply interested in this case. You fear for your own cursed Wliick skin. It was you yourself who mixed up the cholera germs with tlie morphia. You stole back after I left the laboratory, and mixed Lheui together, stealthily and murderously. Lizbeth saw you. She was in the dark room. And, if Olwen dies, she can give positive evidence against you. You are found out. If Olwen dies, you shall stand your trial, yourself, for murder 1 " The words had scarcely escaped his lips when the black man sprang at him with a terrible spring, as fierce and lithe and sudden as a tiger's. Before Harry Chicliole knew what to expect, Mohammad AH was clutching him wildly with his angry hands, holding his neck hard with strong sinewy black fingers, and cramming that vile and hideous he down his perjured throat with unutterable contempt and scorn and loathing. **Liarl'' he cried. "Liar and murderer I If you think yoii can frighten me with j'our empty threats, you mistake your man I I 9^ no movd for them than I oaro for the wrQt'Oh»- *o on 194 THB DIVIL'S DIB, CHAPTER XXXVI. The ship of Colonel Mayne's alikirs, meanwhile, had been drifting hxto more and more perilous watei-s. While Olwuu and Harry were ill, indeed, he had managed to avoid the most dangerous reefs — to put off his heaviest and most importunate creditor by audacious promises that as soon as the quarantine of Queen Anne's Road was once fairly raised he would find the wherewithal in one lump sum for paying him every rupee he owed him. It was magnificent ; but it was not finance. Pro- inises at last come home to roost. As soon as the scare had finally died down, and communications with Seeta, that sanitary suspect, might be safely re-established, the solicitor who represented the Indian banker would no longer be satisfied with such generously hypothetical and contingent statements ; he demanded fact, hard fact— immediate and categorical cash payment. Coin is much more intractable than paper. Arthur Mayne was at his wit's end. The blockade was raised, and still no money was forthcoming. There was nothing for it but an appeal to Mohammad All. As a man of taste, Arthur Mayne didn't relish such indecent precipitancy, to be sure ; for Harry Chichele's body had scarcely yet grown cold in the grave, and his widow — that ■weet little woman with black eyes, who went a walk with him one day on Hampstead Heath — was still seriously ill in her own bedroom. But necessity and solicitors know no law (if so gross a libel on a learned profession may pass unchallenged) — or, at any rate, necessity knows no law, and solicitors know no mercy ; so in the end, Colonel Mayne took up his hat and stick one fine September morning, just a week before the date fixed for rejoining his regiment in Ireland, and called on the Baboo fellow at the house that had once been Harry Chichele's, For very shame's sake, he asked first to see his sister. Natural affec- tion prompts a man to call on his own relations. Seeta came down to him in the little study, so pale and broken that even Arthur Mayne, not by nature a particularly sympathetic man, was shocked and grieved at her altered appearance. Proud and erect and beautiful still, Seeta looked whole ages older than when he last saw her. Arthur Mayne scanned her over in dismay. He was proud of his clever and queenly «ister ; it was a shock to him to see her so changed and wasted. He tried to say as much, after his own fashion, in a few clumsy and iwkward sentences — intended, as he thought, to express his regret without showing too plainly the depth of his disappointment ; but Beeta cut him short with an imperious wave of her thin white hand. ** We know all that," she interposed curtly. " I'm plain and old. I've lost my looks. I'm tired and ill, I'm worn out with nursing. My life's done. I've nothing to live for, I don't want to live. I'm dMi^ THI DBTIL'i DI8. 191 already. — Accept bo much as proved preamble. Now go on. Nevei mind me. Never mind my looks. I don't care if I look like a scarecrow now. There's nobody left for me to care about. I've had my day. I exist in future as security for you. That's all. You may mortgage ma if you like. Body and soul, you may put me up to auction. How much, bid, gentlemen, on the entire earnings, income, copyright and revenue, of this broken and decayed popular novelist, henceforth and for ever ? No reasonable offer refused. Mortgage made over in per- petuity to the highest bidder. I'm yours. Dispose of me. Well, now, what do you want me to do f To go down on my knees for you to Mohammad Ali ? " Colonel Mayne twirled his watch-chain nervously. " Well, not exactly that, Seeta," he answered with some awe ; *' but I'm in a deuced awkward fix, you know. I should certainly like you to use your influence with him to intercede with his father in the matter of sundry acceptances and securities, which " •* That'll do," Seeta, said, interrupting him once more. " Arthur, I'm ashamed to speak on snch a subject at all at such a moment to Mohammad Ali ; but I'm your slave now — I've nothing else left on earth to live for — and I suppose I must do it. You rub your ring, and the slave obeys you. " She moved to the door and opened it with ft sweep. ^ Dr. Ali," she culled up the stairs, '* will you come m here to my brother for a moment ? " Mohammad Ali entered and bowed a bow of distant politeness to tha now deferential and submissive colonel. There is nothing on earth so annoying to an officer and a gentleman as the disagreeable necessity for borrowing money or its equivalent from anybody whom he has pre- viously looked down upon, or treated with insolence. Arthur Mayne felt very small indeed ; but there was no help for it now ; be must go right through with it and swallow his feelings. He glanced at Seeta, with an appealing eye ; but Seeta was inexorable. Her face flushed, and she said nothing. A man may push even tho women of his family too far. Her patience was exhausted, and her pride was soiely touched. He must get out of his own scrapes himBelf the best way possible. Colonel Mayne, therefore, humming and hawing painfully, explained the whole matter as well as he was able, in his inarticulate fashion tc Mohammad Ali. At the best of times the colonel was not lucid ; finance drove him into complete muddle-headedness. Mohammad Ali, cour- teous and urbane, but distant still, listened with a growing sense of discomfort to his roundabout and extremely apologetic explanations. The sensitive Indian felt the humiliation for Seeta most acutely. At last, when Colonel Mayne, at the end of one of his long and involved periods, paused for a moment and pulled out his handkerchief, with an ineffective sigh, Mohammad Ali said quietly, *' I think Miss Mayne's presence here any longer is quite unnecessary. We two can manage this business together better without her." ** Now let us understand one another in full," Mohammad Ali said, after Seeta had swept out of the room with a stately inclination of h^r 196 THB DBTIL'B DIB. head, and » burning lense of shame in her heart. *' Yon owe my fathef moner, do tou ? " ' ** Well, the Sayyid holds some small notes of hand of mine," Oolonel Mayne replied, evasively, shuffling in his chair. *' Precisely so," Mohammad Ali went on with a patient smile. " Yoa owe him money for advances he has made to you. He holds vour notes of hand for the amount. How much ? The total, instantly. ' •' Well," Oolonel Mayne began, twisting his moustache, " yon see, it's like this ; there's a bill at three, six, nine, twelve, renewed quarterly, for ten thousand rupees, which I drew at Calcutta in the year '* " I don't want particulars," Mohammad Ali interposed shortly, with an impatient shrug. **You must see that this interview is equally unpleasant and distressing for both of us. Let us at least mako it brief. Simply state the grand total." Colonel Mayne, thus compelled to face solid facts without any reser- vation — the last thing on earth a man in pecuniary embarrassments can ever be brought to do — muttered in a nervous shame-faced way, with ej js attentively fixed on the pattern of the carpet, *' Why, the grand total, if you will have it, must be somewhere about three thousand five hundred, as well as I remember." ** Pounds?" " Pounds sterling." Mohammad Ali nodded. He calculated silently in hia head a mo« ment. ** Good," he said, after a short pause, *' I can meet that much. Three thousand five hundred. It's a tight pull, but still I can meet it. You need trouble your head no further on the matter." The colonel could hardly believe he heard aright. The Baboo must surely be mad or dreaming 1 *' Three thousand five hundred," ho repeated incredulously. '"You understand, not rupees, but pounds sterling. You'll use your interest with your father for a general renewal ? We can consolidate the bills — they're of various dates —and my sister will back them all for me willingly. Her novels, you know, make a capital security ; all going copyrights ; and she would be willing to mortgage " Mohammad Ali waved his hand once more impatiently. ** Excuse me," he said ; ** you wholly misunderstand the nature of my proposi- tion. There need be no definite paper agreement at all between us This is a debt of honour. I will undertake to settle the matter directly myself, and you shall transfer the debt, to me — as a debt of honour- — to be repaid whenever and however you find it convenient," •* But the interest ? " Colonel Mayne suggested, with a knowing smile. The Baboo, after all, was devilish cunning. So much effusive- ness must mean high rates. He was going to leg him in sixty per cent., and then make a point of having transacted business on a purely gentle- manly and generous basis. ** I'm not a financier," Mohammad Ali replied with a cold smUa. ** Fm a professional man. I require no interest, no notice, no security, no agreement. 1 merely ask you to give me your word of honour that| THB DITIL'I DIB. 197 nrhenever you are able, you will repay me the principal, in whole or in part ; and that you will trouble Miss Mayne as little as possible with your pecuniary affairs and embarrassments in future." ** And you wish me in return ? " the colonel asked, wriggling unconi fortably. ** I wish you to agree to my terms ; that's all," Ali answered, grow- ing hot in the face with the awkwardness of the situation. •* What terms ? " the colonel cried, waxing red in his turn, and glar- ing at the Indian suspiciously across the table. "The terms I have mentioned," Ali replied, drawing himself haughtily up. ** I make no bargain. I'm not a huckster. My only desire is to serve you in this matter." *' With no ulterior end ? " the colonel suggested, still very angry, but with an insinuating smile. ** I can have nc ulterior end on earth," Mohammad Ali answered, not guessing his false tack, *' except to serve c friend of Mrs. Chi- chele's." The colonel nodded. So that was the way the wind blew, was it ? Really the native mind is quite inscrutable. He could hardly under- stand this high and mighty Baboo fellow. The man gave himself such ridiculous airs — pretending to the sentiments and manners of a gentle- man. But business is business ; and in business matters one must sometimes knuckle down to the men who hold the whip-hand over you. Colonel Mayne dissembled his insolence and dislike, and added in n tone intended to be positively genial, "Then you will telegraph over about the matter at once for me ? " Mohammad Ali bowed his head in silence. ''I'll telegraph over," he added shortly. '* And you'll stop these confounded solicitor people 1 " " Certainly. I'll call upon them in Chancery Lane to-morrow morn- ing.'* The colonel hummed. ** Of course," he said, ** I shall be happy. Dr. Ali, t last wishes to the letter. It is hor- rible to me even to think of it — I don't deny it — having known him to decline on a narrower range of feeling and a shallower heart than hit : but if Harry desired it, it must be done at all hazards. " *• If you knew all " Mohammad Ali cried, and then hastily check- ed himself. j *' If I knew all," Seeta answered, shuddering. *' Yes, yes, no doubt, if I knew all, I should see differently. But, thank God, I do not know all. I know only that you and Olwen know of something I do not know ; and if it would make me think less of Harry I don't want aver to know it, either. I, too, know something I have never told you. I E refer to nurse my most sacred sorrow in my own mute way. It's all have left me. For mercy's sake don't take it away from me 1 " '* You do well," Mohammad Ali replied, with tender respectfulneis. ** I reverence your feelings too much to dream of hurting them. Let OS say no more of that. But what can we do now in this matter of Ivan's t" Seeta's eyes returned to the earth with a start from e abysses of Infinity. ** He must come to England," she said, quietly. *' He must KMne at once, and you must go and fetch him." Sht spoke with the certainty of absolute conviction. His will THIE DBTfii'S DII. law for her to all the world. Mohammad Ali relBected a moment. " I must go," he said. *' Yes, you are righfe. It would be impossible to explain all this by letter. Especially that. I must go and fetch him." He had shrunk even from writing to Ivan the whole truth. That truth was too ghastly to confide to any one. But he must face it now. He must tell it all ; he nust bring Ivan home to help them with 01 wen. As for Seeta, she never faltered for a moment now. Harry had ■aid it, and it must be done. Harry's word was absolute law. She would ask Lizbeth who had been in the room that last night, and Lizbeth would tell her. If Lizbeth confirmed what Ali had said, Ali must go through fire and water to bring back Ivan. For Lizbeth, too, had remained at Polperran the winter through. Like a dog in everything, she must have a master or mistress. It was a want of her nature. Now that Harry was gone, she felt she must cleave to Seeta and Olwen , but above all to Seeta. He had loved the tall 'un, she said to herself, and she must do now as the tall 'un wished her. Obedience to Seeta, affection to Seeta. was part of her posthum- ous devotion to Harry. It was Lizbeth's instinctive religion to fawn upon somebody ; and as Harry had seemed to inherit from her mother, BO Seeta seemed to her to inherit from Harry. When Seeta asked her about that last interview, Lizbeth rose, dra- matic as ever, from the chair where she sat, and with Harry Chichele's very voice and accent, reduced to her own grammar and vocabulary, she gave an account of the whole incident, in her strange tragic way, ** 'E up an' 'e says, ' Ali,' says 'e, looking at 'im like this, right through and through, * as soon as I'm gone,' says 'e, ' an' I'm goin' soon, Ali, Olwen must marry Ivan Royle. That's the only thing as can ever put me out of her memory. *E's better fiitted for *er,* says *e *than ever I was. She could love 'im, an' 'e loves 'er. Let 'er 'ave 'im,' says 'e, * let 'er 'ave 'im ; let 'er 'ave 'ira. ' " Seeta bowed her head in acquiescence and wept silently. It was desecration, but it was Harry's wish. That Ivan Royle should aspirt to wed Harry Chichele's widow grated on every faith and hope of hei being. That Harry Chichele's widow should have a thought left for Ivan Royle shocked and surprised her. But Harry desired it, and Harry must be obeyed. Mohammad Ali must go to America to bring baoklvao. ffSK dstil's du. Mi CHAPTER XXXVTIL So it was finally decided that Mohammad All should go to Amerioa, to bring back Ivan Koyle, no unwilling yictim, for Olwen'i lake, to hia native country. Where exactly Ivan might be, Mohammad Ali hardly realized. Ameri- can geography b a blank to most of ua. He had only a vague idea in some lost corner of his brain that Ivan's general direction was towards the setting sun, and that he might be confidently looked for as an artist at large among the furthest recesses of the Rocky Mountains. But the Rocky Mountains form a somewhat wide address. Ivan, to be sure, had written to his Indian friend from time, to time, by fits and starts ; but of late months letters outward had steadily miscarried. They had been sent to Ivan's last known halting-place at frontier towns on the western limit of civilization, which they generally reached after Ivan had left again, with bag and baggage, for parts unknown high up in the Sierras ; and thus it came to pass that even so many months after Harry Chichele's death Ivan Royle remained in utter ignorance of the fact that Olwen was now a widow. Had he known all, he would have harried home to England long since of his own accord. He would have come at once to watch over Olwen in her solitude and terror. But Ivan, disgusted with cowboys and miners, had been sketching for months alone among the loneliest parts of the western mountains with A small party of Indian guides ; only going down to the nearest settle- ment at rare intervals to post his packet of drawings to the Porte- Crayon, and returning as quickly as possible to the wholesome wilds from the polluted neighborhood of faro banks and the drinking saloons. His last known address had been Petroleum Gulch , and to Petroleum Gulch, wherever that might bo, Mohammed Ali hoped in time west- ward to wend his solitary way. It took him only some twenty-four hours to make his mind up ; and when he told Olwen that he was going to America in search of Ivan, Olwen opened her childish black eyes in pleased surprise, and answered, ** Thank you," as frankly and as naively as a child might have answered it. Next day Mohammad Ali took his departure from Polperran, TJiere it ooe country in the world, tnd one tlone, wb«r«, THK devil's dik. 209 black or white, Christian or Mohammadan, European or Asiatic, a man's a man for all that ; and that country is certainly not republican Am- erica. Mohammad Ali, laying down his head on his sleepless pillow that first night, said to himself ten thousand times over, ** I wish to heaven I was back again in free England." How many a disillusioned republican pilgrim from the old world has said the same thing with .1 full heart before and since him 1 And yet, so far, he had only touched the outermost threshold of the great Republic. He had still to learn in th« wild weat the full terrors .and horrors of free America. CHAPTER XXXIX Itan Botls had not revisited Eagle City for many months. Eagle Oity was hardly to his taste. It was too occidental in thought and manners for his English fancy. The episode of the Chinaman had sufficed to drive him from the squalid neighbourhood of the Sunset Lode trail, and to turn his steps for a while among the lonely mountains, where nothing more dangerous than Red Indians and grizzly bears were likely to disturb his philosophic and artistic quiet. Chaparral Bill and his rowdy companions grated on Ivan's sense of the fitness of things. He much preferred the unsophisticated red man of the wild west. The simple children of nature stabbed and shot and scalped and got drunk without the faintest pretence that they were the pioneers of Aryan culture in the great west, or that they were planting the g "^^s of Am- erican liberty on tue rolling confines of the boundless pra : ics. Ivan rather liked his Indian guides, in fact. They were unpretentiously wicked. The innocent criminality of the born savage does not disgust one like the degenerate and decadent immorality of the outcast and oflF-scourings of European civilisation in its worst avatars. At times, however, Ivan found himself compelled by dire necessity to come down from his temporary encampment on the mountain slopes, where he and his Indians subsisted chiefly on the "product of the chase," as Chaparral Bill, who had never shot any game in his life except the human subject, loved to designate it — in quest of supplies and the sinews of war, to Petroleum Gulch or Eagle City. *'Wal, tenderfoot," the proprietor of the National Pacific Hotel remarked to Ivan, as he sat down to the table, weary and footsore after a long tramp, at that convenient resting-placa a day or two later ; ** we ain't seen much of you or your money round lately since the boys strung up the yellow-faced laundryman for cheating at poker, have we ? You was on the laundryman's side, as I recollect it. You don't see no harm in cheating at poker, you don't. Them principles may go do\'rii in the country whar you come from, but they don't suit the Mountain Slope Territories. West of the Mississippi, we go solid for the supre- macy of ordoTf The people of the Mountain Slope Territories are lo (14) 910 THs devil's dis. honest, high- principled, law abidin' community, who object to tricking at cards, and aU other forms of swindlin' and dishonesty. But there won't be no dishonesty lyin' around loose in these here diggings for the next week or two. Monte Joe's in the city, now, he is. He's death on law and order, Joe is. There ain't such a chap for backing up tha executive and enforcin' moral principles in the whole Territory as Colonel Joseph Jefferson Ridley." "What, Joe Ridley the murderer?" Ivan asked quietly. *'Some people might call him so," the landlord replied, with an ironical air of affected abstraction," "when Joe wasn't around to ex- plain matters and strenuously resist the defamation of his character. Joe's down on all defamation of character, he is. He can't abide no libel or slander. Never was such a chap for promotin' purity of langu- age. " 'Pears to me," he landlord observed reflectively, as he chawed up a slice from a raw lemon, " that in Europe folks ain't got no proper pride in their position as white men. Thay ain't been brought into contact with inferior races, that's where it is. They don't recognize that a white man's got to shoot an Injun whenever the durned redskin misbehaves himself, or there wouldn't be no law and order anyway. Moral susasion's necessary for the inferior races ; niggers and Injuns must do as they'er bid, or you've got to drop *em. Otherwise there ain't no maintainin' the Caucasian supremacy. There's a nigger coma to town, too, by the way, since you was here last. He arrived in the city this afternoon from down trail. The toniest nigger I see ; you bet. Gives himself airs like a United States senator, and holds up his head as if he was president of the Union Pacific Railroad, and could boss the whole California State Legislature." ** Indeed," Ivan answered, a touch of pity mingled with the contemptuous irony of his careless tone. *' Poor devil, I pity him. These are bad quarters for any nigger to find himself in any day." ** Wal, the boys wiU have their fun out of him, I presoom," the land- lord observed, with the air of a man who, for argument's sake, makes a candid admission. ** He thinks a sight too much of himself for a nigger, that's whar it is ; and the boys are engaged in making him •how his teeth like a coyote in a cage when you poke a stick through the bars at him. He's pretty considerably riled, you may take your dying oath on it." *' I suppose it would be useless to interfere between them and their victim," Ivan murmured aloud to himself, with a sinking heart, as he thought of the poor defenceless black man in the hands of so many ruffianly and merciless tormentors. *' That's so. The boys ain't going to have their sport spiled," the landlord admitted with prompt conviction. '* Besides, they don't mean to allow no more niggers nor Chinamen of any sort in Eagle City. And this 'ere nigger's a caution to snakes. You never heerd anything like the way he talks : thinks himself own brother to the Emperor of Russia and first cousin to the Vanderbilts of New York City. He's been inquiring after you, too, now I come to tliink of it. Asked if a ohap of the nam^ 9t Boyle, a painter \f^ trade, was fooUng round TBI DBTIL'8 DIB. 211 anywhere in this section. He's come straight on Prom Petroleum Gulch, where I reckon they raised his dander a bit already. Mad, I call him. Sez he's t)ie Prophet Mahomet, or something of the sort He's come here last from Europe, but he sez he was raised originally in India. Talked a lot about the Prophet Mahomet — escaped, most likely, from a lunatic asylum somewheres." A horrible li^ht burst suddenly upon Ivan Ro^ • ; mind. He could hardly believe it. So great a misfortune could scarcely be true. It was Mohammad Ali I In the horror of the moment the name itself escaped his tremblinsr lips. The landlord nodded an unconcerned assent. " Mohammaa Harry," he repeated, with a laugh. '*Yes, yes, that was just what the nigger called himself. A fine -spoken, high-falutin', Broadway- dude of a nigger : got up like a masher, and talks like a jedge of the Supreme Court. The boys are at him now, makin' him roar like mad, down at the Road to Ruin." Ivan Royle's blood ran cold within him. Mohammad Ali the butt of the boys at the Road to Ruin 1 That tender, sensitive, chivalrous black man abandoned to the jibes and jeers, and cruel horse-play of Chapparal BUI and his coarse-minded associates t ** How long has this been going on?" he gasped out in a perfect agony of anticipation. " When did he get there ? When did you see himf" *' He came here an hour ago," the landlord answered with a mali- cious smile, *' and the boys are on him at the Road to Ruin like a tarrier on the rats, you bet. Monte Joe's making things tolerable lively for him." Without another word, Ivan jumped from the table, leavine hia steak and beer unfinished as it stood, and rushed down the long, irregular wooden street, till he reached the door of the Road to Ruin. As he entered that miserable slipshod wooden drinking saloon, a pitiable sight indeed met his eyes. In the midst of a loathsome crowd of rough, unshaven, and unkempt miners, Mohammad Ali, tall and handsome, with the carriage of a prince and the features of a poet, in dress and aspect every inch a gentleman, stood there at bay, in fierce Indian anger, confronting and defying, with clenched fist and close-set teeth, that wretched group of leering, jeering, sneering vagabonds. His eyes flashed with dangerous fire, and his curling hp flung back upon the men a proud contempt which their natures could never permit them even to understand. On the contrary, they took his fiery resentment for a capital joke, and loud cries of ** Well done, nigger 1 " " Go it, nigger 1 " "Ain't he toney, neither ! " *' Don't he carry sone style about him, ruther ? " resounded amidst coarse bursts of laughter from every side of the reeking whiskey-shop. Ivan Royle dashed into their midst with true British impetuosity, and before the men had time to recover from their first astonishment, he was grasping Mohammed Ali fervently by the hand, and clearing away the foremost > idlers with his strong arms from the throng in the oentNi that crowded u>d impeded him* SIS TBI BBTIL'e Dm. ** Now then, tenderfoot," the nearest miner exclaimed angrily, at Ivan tossed him back upon the group behhid with a dash of his hand, " them may be manners where you was raised, but they won't do west of the Mississippi. The nigger's a friend of yDurs, is he ? I thought you was about there yourself, I did. I'll have to trouble you to let go of him this rainnit." Almost before Ivan could realize what was happening, the whole party had closed in around them, and was hustling them now in real earnest, with many savage cries of indignation and astonishment. Took the nigger's part, did he ? So much the worse for him." *' Nig- gers have got to clear out of Eagle City?" *' We go in for the Caucasian supremacy 1 " " The tenderfoot must go ! " ** Draw on the nigger, Billl " "No amalgamation!" "Who says niggers and Chinamen ? " Ivan and Ali looked around them in despair. They might have fought and sold their lives dearly ; but to do more than that was simply impossible. Ali laid his hand on Ivan's shoulder. " Royle," he said in a low whisper ; " Harry Chichele's dead, and Mrs. Chichele has been seriously ill. For her sake, I came to bring you home to England. For her sake, I hope you'll try to get away peaceably. Don't fire on these curs ; it's better to endure it. I've borne and put up with a good deal already. I don't mind putting up with it a little longer now that I've found you at last. If only we can once get away down the trail towards the Union Pacific it'll be all right. The people below are only insolent. Don't let's fight. Let's make any terms on earth with them, and take our lives in our hands cmly." Ivan Royle turned round to the men appealingly. ** Look here," he said, holding them off for a moment once more with his powerful arm. " We don't want to fight. We want fair play, and nothing else. No derringers, if you please, gentlemen. Give us room, and we'll clear out of Eagle City at once. We're going to England. My friend, who is no nigger, but an Eastern gentleman, has come in search of me on important business. Let us go, and we'll never darken your doors again. You don't want us. Why should you keep us ? We've done you no harm, why molest us ? " The rowdies talked together for a moment, and then Cha parrel Bill, the spokesman of the set, answered with an oath, '* What do you want to go an' assault us for, then ? We was sittin' here, like a party of gentlemen in their own saloon, havin' a bit of a talk with the nigger from Europe — makin' kind inquiries after his friends and relations, and admirin' his style and store clothes — and in you come like a young earthquake, jostling' and huatlin' a group of peaceable an' unoffendin* citizens, and' takiu' the nigger's part, and assaultin' the police in the execution of their dooty ; and then, when peaceable citizens rally to the side of the law and order, you call out like a gal afore you're hurt, and begin to talk about making tracks for Europe. Wal, you can go whenever you like. We ain't got no personal quarrel with you. You've alius behaved, on the whole, decent and regular. But not the nigger. No nigger shall oome carortin' around Eagle oit^ like thaX« And TBB DIYIL's DIB. Sid •xpectin' to paint the town red, with his durned style, and then go off again without payin' for it, whenever it pleases him, anyway. Niggers has got to pay for style : and they pay for it with their hides, I guess, in this community." He stepped aside and made a little lane for Ivan down the midst to the door. " You can go, if you like," he said, once more, in a tone of authority to the Englishman, *' but not the nigger. Nigger, say, you stand right thar, and mind your own business, till we're ready to larrup you." Ivan Royle's blood boiled over. *' You cur," he cried, pushing back Chaparral Bill with his clenched hand, angrily. '* Touch him, if you iare ! If you do, you shall feel the weight of an English fist on that ugly nose of yours. " *' Go," Mohammad Ali exclaimed, at his ear in haste. ** Never mind me. For her sake, go. I can sell my life easily for two of theirs. Start down the trail as hard as you can go for the Union Pacific 1 I shall have lived my days if only I can send you home safe to her." ** Never 1 " Ivan answered aloud. " I will never leave you. Ali, Ali, I'd die a thousand times over sooner than leave such a man as you are to these ruffian's mercy. I know them too well. They're fiends incarnate. If we must die, we'll die together. Stand clear there, you blackguards. Don't lay a hand on us. I shall take this gentleman up with me to my own hotel." At the word genHeman, applied to the black man, the circle of out- casts gave a loud shout of unfeigned merriment. As it died away Cha- parral Bill stepped forward once more and clapped his hands resolutely on Ivan's shoulder. " Very well, boys," he said, *' the tenderfoot don't accept our terms. He won't give up his durned nigger. Let him take his trial, then. He's committed an assault on half a dozen of us. In absence of any duly constitooted authority, I arrest him an* the nigger on a charge of riot, Close in there, all of you bt)ys, right an' loft. Hold 'em tight, boys, an' march 'em off straight to the Dow Drop." The boys carried out their instructions to the letter. At the Dew Drop, they locked thtnn up all night in an empty room, while they themselves deliberated as to what further steps should be taken to punish these two intrusive foreigners for the crime of rioting. Mohammad Ali spent most of the night in talking to Ivan. There was much to tell and much to explain. But somehow, in that wild far-western world, even Harry Chichel )'s crime seemed less ghastly than before. It had at least the outer glozo of culture and European refinement to mask and conceal its inmost hideousness. Compared to such men as Chaparral Bill, Harry Chichele himself grew for tlie mom- ent into a tender-hearted, educated, ill-advised English Kentlouvin. It was easier to deal with tho deadliest germs than the brutal violence of that nest of robbers. fl4 THB DBYIL'S DI& CHAPTER XL. Next morning, about ten o'clock, Chaparral Bill, accompanied by a large and boisterous contingent of the boys, came around to interview them. The man assumed a queer consequential air of judicial power in the absence of any constituted authority. He acted as though he were mouthpiece of law and order, while he appeared to consider that the two prisoners had been caught in flagrant rebellion against the Government and people of the United States, and their repretentatives in Eagle City. '*Wal, tenderfoot," he said, regarding Ivan with curious interest, as though he were a specimen of some rare wild animal, " the boys have been thinking this matter over, and they've deputed me to give the result of their deliberations. " '* I'm obliged to them for their polite attention," Ivan replied with stolid self -suppression, gazing round in unconcealed aversion and dis- gust upon the rough crowd of dirty and ill-shaven miners. "The boys consider," Chaparral Bill went on with severe gravity, " that you both put on a durned sight too much style. The boys don'fc approve of style. They don't approve of it, even in a white man ; but th«>y arn't going to stand it, they say outright, in a woolly-headed nigger." " The boys are of opinion, too," Chaparral Bill continued, in the voice and manner of an official speaker, '* that you can't be much of a white man yourself, or you wouldn't be so uncommon thick with nig- gers, and Injuns, and yellow-faced Chinamen. You ain't got no proper pride of race, you haven't, that's whar it is. You don't support the Caucasian supremacy. The boys are all for equal rights, they are ; but the're death on supporting the Caucasian supremacy." "Indeed," Ivan answered with ironical emphasis. " Well," Chaparral Bill began afresh, turning round to Ivan, •* under these painful circumstances, the boys are of opinion, tender- foot, that Eagle City ain't the proper environment adapted for yourself, and your friend the nigger. You're a deal too ready with your big fists, and you tend to provoke a breach of the peace with the freedom of your comments on men and institootions. At first sight, some of the boys was for severe measures. They proposed to utilize you for start- ing our projected new cemetery down the Coyote Canyon. But they've decided, instead, that a small party of us should lead you down the Coyote Canyon as far as the sage-brush, and, as one might put it judi* ciallj, escort you to the frontier, requesting you to vacate the city limita." To Mohammad Ali, who did not know the very meaning of the word M^e-bnuh, that awful leatenoe, prunouoced with all the oool blood- TBI DBYIL'S pil. Slf thirsty humour of the western American, conveyed but little idea of its real and terrible import. He imagined merely that ** the boys," in the exercise of an unexpected clemency, intended to see them safely out of Eagle City, and to take care that the^ did not return to it. But to Ivan, who knew the sage-brush well, the decree of that informal though none the less potent and final tribunal came home at once in all Its ghastly and fatal reality. The tender mercies of the wicked are very cruel. He was only too well acquainted with the nature of the sage-brush, that awful desert of waterless alkaline sand and clay that intervenes between the mountain region and the grass-clad prairie. He knew that the desert was trackless and impassable ; that return up the C? iiyon was blocked by their present captors and judges ; that no other way back to the Pacific slope was anywhere practicable. He recognized, in short, that Chaparral Bill's lightly-spoken sentence was nothing other than a sentence of death by slow starvation. Starvation long and hideous and unspeakable in a thirsty land, of blinding dust, and deadly irritating saline exhalations. He held his breath, and looked hard at Ali. It was too horrible to believe. And yet he knew those rough and lawless men far too well not to feel sure that they really intended this unearthly devilry. The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty. •' Before we get the escort under way, though," Chaparral Bill con- tinued, turning with a nasty smile to Mohammad Ali, " there's one little point I'd like to settle with you right here, if you please, Mr. Nieger. I observe you've got a very nice ring on your derned dark hand there ; and if I can trust myself for anything of a judge — which I ought to be by this time — I should say the stone in it's a genuine dia- mond. Now, I never took anything off a fellow critter's body afore — that is to say, not as long as he was alive, anyhow ; but I don't hold with a nigger wearing diamonds. It's too much style, that's what I call it. In the interests of peace and of the Caucasian supremacy, I'll trouble you. Sambo, to take that ring off and hand it over." Mohammad All's eyes were like an angry wild beast's to look at. It was her ring, and he would sooner ten thousand times have died whore he stood than have yielded it up to that miserable miscreant. *' You infernal scoundrel," he cried, leaping wildly forward, and hissing out the words fiercely from between his clenched teeth, '* if you take th.it ring, you'll have to take it off my dead body. And if you dare to advance a single step nearer me, by heaven, as sure as you're standing there, you son of a dog, I'll blow your confounded worthless brains out. As he spoke, he drew for the first time his revolver from his breast pocket, and pointed it straight at the wretched bully's right temple. Chaparral Bill sprang back in surprise. Evidently this was a very different species of nigger from the kind of nigger to whom he was accustomed in St. Louis or San Francisco. So strange an apparition took his breath away for a moment, and left him undecided what on •arth to think of it. " Now, listen to me, you blackguard," Mohammad Ali went on mor« ooollyi ouv«riug Chaparral Bill lUl the while with the muzslv <4 hi§ 216 TBI dstil'i Dim revolrer. *'My friend Mr. Royle and I are British Bubjects. Toi can shoot us both here now, if you like, though I give you fair warning we'll sell our lives dearly if you try it on, and you shall be the very first we fire at. But if you shoot us you'll have to answer for it. We're not Americans, thank God ; we're British subjects. There's law for British subjects, all the world over, even here in your dirty little backwoods encampment. You may get off scot free, if you kill us, for this moment ; but as soon as we're missed at home, our Government will make enquiries of your Government at Washington ; and your Government will hunt you down, man by man, through fire and water; and in the end, if heaven and earth have to be moved for it first, not a soul that has borne a hand in this cowardly crime but will be strung up for it, and hanged by the neck on the gallows till dead, as you every one of you richly deserve to be. Hands off, and mind my words ; the very first man that fires a shot will have to answer for it to the United States' courts and to the British Government." " That's so," a quiet voice in the background assented gravely. Every eye turned instinctively to the last speaker. It was Monte Joe. That accomplished gambler, robber, and murderer, superior t > the rest in cunning and crime, was superior to them, too, in information and intelligence. " You agree with the nigger, then. Colonel Ridley," the ringleader asked, turning round to the greater ruffian with quite submissivenesa. " Well, Bill and boys," Monte Joe replied with evident condescen- sion (as becomes a man who has dropped his fellow-citizens freely, in speaking to less prominent and respected townsmen), *' 1 don't exactly say I agree with him, but there's a deal of truth in what he claims, any way. If you drop him here, nigger or no nigger, why that's murder. I don't say it ought to be ; but such is the law of the United States, as at present unamended, and you've got to submit to it. Sooner or later, then, it's sure to get about east, in the cities or town's, that you boys murdered him. Well, after that, the press '11 get wind of it across yonder in England, and his friends '11 put the executive in motion, and they'll waste a year or two in diplomacy and trouble and exchanging notes ; but, before they've done, they'll have the whole thing disin- terred and string you up, as sure as the gospel — that's so, Bill. Better let the nigger keep his ring any way. You stick to accident boys and give 'em the sage-brush. It's every bit as sure and ten times safer from unpleasantness of any sort." Chaparral Bill accepted the compromise. It goes agin the grain,'* he said, with a regretful sigh, '' to see a nigger go off with a ring like that right away to the sage-brush ; but if you think it's best, Joe, it ain't a fellow -citizen's dooty to differ from you on a pint of etiquette — especially as you're a gentleman of known experience in them matters. Form yourselves in order, boys. That's so. We'll march 'em right away jest now to the frontier." The boys fell in, and Ivan and Ali, seeing all resistance utterly use- less before the face of such overpowering numbers, marched quietly down betweep their ranks, guarded on either side by loaded re?olTttii» TBI DBYIL's DIB. 217 Por three miles they marched on and down, away from the moun- tains, towards the Atlantic slope. As they went, the country grew drier and ever drier before them, for Eagle City lay almost on the very verge of the dreaded and waterless sage-brush desert. At a point where the sage-brush began to deepen and thicken drearily around them, Chaparral Bill called a halt. The boys halted, Chaparral Bill pointed with his hand vaguely eastward. "That's the way to England," he said, with ironical emphasis. '* Right over thar, you can't well miss it. You've only got to cross that belt of gage brush thar, and — if you live — you'll reach the prairie. From the prairie, it's easy enough to rail east as far as New York, whence frequent com- munication exists by steamer with all the principal ports of Europe. Live it through, and you're all right. I guess the sage-brush is the only thing that'll trouble you. You know your road. Keep straight ahead, and in time — if you don't starve — you'll get to England. But if you attempt to turn up the trail by Eagle City and cross the Sierra, you'll find yourselves suffering from a severe form of Montana inflam- matory disease — an ounce of lead in the brain — before to-morrow evening. Now march. Boys, we've got rid of the nigger and hii friend. Good riddance. No blackguardism allowed in Eagle City. Give 'em a parting cheer, boys, and right about face for camp again afore this doggone desert wind chokes us I " At the word, the boys drew their derringers, and fired in the air with a loud report. Then they turned in good order and marched home- ward, leaving Ivan and Ali face to face by themselves with the lonely desert. " What must we do ? " Ali asked in despair. Ivan took in the full terror of the situation better than the black man. *' Three days' hard walking will take us across the sage-brush," he said with a groan, " if we can last out to do it. It's an awful walk, but for her sake we must try it. There's only one chance open for us — to walk as far and as hard as we can while we have got any life left in us. If once we can struggle across that ghastly plain — which no man ever yet crossed on foot — there's food and water at the other side ©fit." CHAPTER XLL Bt this time the sun had risen high in the sky, and was pouring down upon their heatis with all the torrid force which he always exerts in sandy desert regions. Mohammad Ali cast a glance at the horrible waste before them, and then turned appealingly to Ivan. " Wouldn't it be best," he said, " to lie by during the heat of the day, and push on boldly when the sun goes down 7 We could walk better, surely, after nightfall They always do so in the Eastern desertt." ill TBI DXYIL'fl DII. Ivan shook hi«i head in emphatic dissent. " No," he answered with prompt decision. *' 1 know my ground. That's all very well for men with supplies, but for us, nothing on earth could well be worse. At present^ we've still the strength of food and drink left in our bodies. Thank heaven, they gave us breakfast before we started. We can do a good many miles on that, if we push on hard, before evening. But if we waited, we should set out on our tramp hungry and thirsty and half exhausted to start with. Let's use up our fresh strength to the best advantage while we've still got any. Ali, it's a desperate chance at the best. No human being — not even a red Indian, they say — ever yet crossed this desert on foot. If it were not for her, I'd never even try to cross it. A lingering death's all we can expect. It would be easier far to draw our revolvers and fire them simultaneously at one another's foreheads." '* There's no way round across the mountains 7" Ali suggested ten- tatively. Ivan waived his hand in utter despondency over the distant Sierra. ** Eagle City blocks the only pass for two hundred miles in that direc- tion, he answered. *' There's desert everywhere, howling desert, till you reach the springs of the Arroyo river." Three days' distance, without food or drink, through that waterless plain, and amid those dusty levels 1 They were both strong ; they were both brave , but no human resolution, Mohammad Ali fancied, could ever enable them to face it out, with tlie hot wind blowing fiercely in their scorched faces, and the blinding alkali drivmg into their eyes from oflF the long vistas of that poisoned plain. He stooped down and looked close at the baked and gaping ground. It consisted entirely of coarse sand shining white with salt and alkaline matter, and sparsely clothed with stunted tussocks of a dry brown grass in between the taller clumps of the olive-grey sagebrush. ** It Hometimes rains here," he cried, turning eagerly to Ivan. " See, this grass has once been fresh and green. I've seen its like in the Rajpu- tana desert. There must be rain for grass to grow. Light showers must sometimes cover the ground here, too, or there would'nt be any small vegetation among the desert brushwood." Ivan shook his head gloomily. ** No, no," he answered. ** It never rains ; absolutely never, from year's end to year's end. The grass grows, just here on the outskirts, in early spring, when the snow first melts on the lower slopes of the Sierra. But it's only for a week or two. After that it dies down entirely. The grass was over and f ■ ne on the outer belt a clear month ago. Further on in the desert there's no herbage at all, dead or alive — nothing but sand and salt and wiry dry sage-brush. Don't look out for miracles, Ali. It's no good. Make up your mind for the worst at once. Our only hope is in pure hopelessness. There's not a single drop of water of any sort between this place where we now stand and the edge of the prairies." Nevertheless they must tramp and try it. For Olwen's take, II was all for 01 wen. I>wert, desert — everywhere desert 1 warn drtil'i bii. S19 They walked on, always under the eye of that blazing sun, through ft sea of sand, monotunous and illimitable. No shade, no change no relief anywhere. Nothing but sand, and salt, and dust, and sunshine, mile after mile, hour after hour, in wearisome repetition. And so like the sea in this, too, that as they moved they seemed to get no further on their way. The grey horizon, a mere thin line where the sweltering sand faded and melted into the sweltering sky, receded and receded •ver dimly before them, without sign or landmark to measure the dis- tance they had yet traversed. So they walked on and on and still on, moving slowly forward towards nowhere, in a straight line, marked out for them roughly by the direction of their own shadows. And above them, far behind, the white Sierras raised up towards heaven their spotless peaks of untrodden snow, as if to mock and torment them with the torture of Tantalus. That was their only possible measure of distance done. They looked back often towards those silent heights, that hardly seem to fall back into the distance at all, as the two unhappy and blinded men floundered helplessly on among the drifted dust heaps. At the end of three hours' hard marching they came to a rock. It wasn't much of a rock. Anywhere else in the world they would hardly have noticed it, for it was a small rough boulder, standing scarce three feet above the surface of the plain, but it cast a shadow — a short shadow — the hrst shadow, except their own, they had seen since enter- ing that awful wilderness. They sat down of one accord, without exchanging a word, in its scanty shade — the shadow of a great rock in ft thirsty land. Then Mohammad Ali drew forth from his pocket a small spirit flask. At its bottom lay half a wine-glass full of whiskey. It was all they had to keep them aJive till they reached the prairie. He dropped four or five drops slowly, as if by measure, on his own tongue. Then he said to Ivan, '* Take some, too. Let it lie in your mouth. It'll relieve you a little." Ivan took it and did as he was bid. Even those few drops seemed strangely to revive their flagging courage. Small things make a won- derful difference in extremities. After a minute, Ivan rose to his feet. *' Let's keep moving," he said ; if we once stop we shall get stiff, and it'll be all che harder for us to start on our way again. " They started once more and walked on and on— ever onward steadily towards thai receding horizon, "the hours seemed so long that Ivan could hardly believe hia watch when he took it out to look, had not their shadows unmistakably confirmed its message. They were not walking now ; they were staggering and reeling. They rolled with the gait of drunken men. The desert seemed to take away their senses altogether. Mohammad Ali wiped his diy brow. In spite of the heat and the toil, they had ceased to perspire. It was the alkali, choking and clogging the pores of their skin. So much the better, that ; there would be less evaporation. They might manage to hold up all the lonj^er. But the pain of moving their limbs was excruciating. Each more- vient felt like a wrench in the socket. No living thing seemed U> in* 130 TBI DETIL^ Dll. habit this gha«tly and lonely waste of desert. Not even a lizard skulked among the scrub ; not even a beetle hid its hard wings among the dull grey foliag«. Still they marched and marched and marched, till evening came, and the sun set. Then the desert began to grow cooler around them. - Ali's feet were sore to the bone, but Ivan walked on as stoutly as ever. The Englishman seemed to have the greater go. At last Ali gave in the first ; not that he would have been the first to give in, all things equal, but his shoes were thinner, not meant for Western wear, and his physi-' cal sufiering was greater than Ivan's. ** Shall we stop now," he said, **and put up for the night ? I suppose you mean to sleep somewhere,- Royle.^' ** I mean to stop," Ivan answered with dry and almost inarticulate throat ; " but as to sleeping, I'm afraid that's quite another matter." They sat down on a bare patch of sand, under the lee of a thick clump of sage-brush ; for the dust was driving before the light breeze, and would soon have buried them deep under its clouds anywhere in the open. They had not tasted food since morning, nor any drink ex- cept the few stinted drops of whiskey. A little spirit was still left at the bottom of the flask. They spared it for the present, fearing to waste their all on the first day out. Mohammad Ali looked hard in his friend's face. For a long time he seemed to debate within himself. Dare he speak, or would it anger the Englishman ? At last, with an efibrt, he leaned forward. *' Ivan," he said, clutching his friend's arm convulsively, " there's one way out of it still, one way to get you back safe to Olwen. We needn't both die. If only " And he hesitated. With a strange start of recognition Ivan caught instinctively at the Indian's unspoken moaning, and drew back with a face of speechless horror. '* Ali," he cried, " don't say so again. Don't breathe a word of it. Don't dream of it, Ali. Don't suggest the idea, even. You horrify and alarm me. Drop the notion at once. For God's sake ? I implore you, forget you ever even thought of it." Ali held up his wrist temptingly before his face and stared at it hard. Then he drew his pocket-knife from his pocket and opened the blade with a quiet look of resolute determination. He put one finger on the left-hand pulse. He could feel it beating and throbbing wildly within there. " If you could only make up your mind to it, Royle," he cried, in a piteous voice. "It's our solitary hope. We can never, never make our way together across this endless desert. Why should both die when one would be sufficient. For her sake — for her sake. If you won't agree to it, we must both die. If you will, only one of us — me — need be sacrificed. Men have done it before, in the extremity of famine ; and the world has pardoned them on the plea of necessity. And in this case I give myself up willingly to assist your escape. You needn't even see it ; you can drink as a child drinks from its mother's breast. Suppose, by accident, now, the knife were to slip " With a wild cry of horror and aflfright wrung from his parched lips, Ivan Royle seized the Indian's light wrist in his strong hand, and, w?esting from him the open knife, flung it with all hif might in a greal THB devil's DIB. SSI arch a hundred yards off among the scrubby sage-brush. The emotion of the moment seemed to supply hira as if by miracle with fresh strength and even to moisten his dry throat. " Ali," he cried, taking both the Indian's dusky hands in his, and gazing earnestly into his great black eyes, *' don't, don't, for heaven's sake don't ! You can't imagine how you shock and distress me. I know how you mean it — what noble and generous self-sacrifice it is ; but I can't bear even to hear you speak of it. It revolts me through every nerve in my body. Ali, Ali, my dear, dear fellow, do spare me any more. This hunger and thirst and fatigue is bad enough. Don't make it worse for us by such horrible suggestions of impossible expedients." Ali flung himself down in despair on the sand. '* Then it's all up," lie said. *' Kismet, kismet. We sh all r. ever either of us get back alive. There's no hope. We must die where we stand. Two more such days are simply impossible. " Ivan crouched gloomily down by his side, and held the black man'i hand in his own with infinite sympathy. Exce])t in supreme momenta of emergency or peril, men are seldom demonstrative to one another. But there comes a point at last in the fight for life at which the mutual reserve of men dreaks down utterly, and, face to face with death or despair, they become tender as women in their care and solicitude for each other's feelings. The tears stood clear in Ivan's eyes. "Spare them, Ivan ; for heaven's sake spare them ! " Ali cried with an effort. *' Every drop of moisture in your blood is life to you now." And aa he spoke, his own tears rose brimming to the surface, and trickled slowly down his dark cheek. The men clasped each other's hands like two school girls, and lay down together side by side under the open heaven on the bare sand. The stars were coming out now overhead, •ne by one, and the desert was growing rapidly cooler and fresher. A great silence reigned upon the scene. Not a sound broke the ominous stillness of death ; no hum of insects, no cry of birds, no distant con- fused murmur of life in any way. In the forest, night mikes the still- ness audible ; in the arid sand- wastes, night makes the stillness pro- founder and more appalling than ever. For leagues around, tho desert lay dead and mute in the dim starlight, and the sand and the sage- brush stretched away illimitable towards the grey horizon on every side, with those two desolate and footsore creatures huddled together, alone and helpless, an oasis of humanity in its very midst. "Good night," Ivan said, turning round on his side for pure weari- -ness. " Good night," Ali answered, half conscious even then in his own mind of the bitter mockery of that conventional salutation, and clos- ing his eyes with painful effort to keep out tho dust of the all'p§rw dkig alkali. 122 TBS d&vil'b OUL C5HAPTBR XLn. Stranob to say, they both slept, slept soundly, and never stirred till morning had begun to whiten the eastern horizon. They woke with a start, to find themselves once more in the midst of the desert. Pure fatigue had made them fall asleep without food or drink ; but when they raised themselves on their elbows and stared around, their mouths were white and dry and leathery, and their swollen tongues oould hardly utter a single word for want of internal moisture. Mohammad Ali drew the precious flask lovingly from his pocket and handed it, with a gesture of his hands, to Ivan. Ivan dropped four drops on his wrinkled tongue, and passed it wearily back again. Ali nodded, and screwing down the lid with jealous care, was just replacing it untasted in his pocket when Ivan checked him. *'Stop," he cried, rolling the wretched pittance of spirit round his parched mouth. •' Why, what on earth are you doing, Ali ? You haven't taken a drop yourself yet." Ali nodded a second time and shook his head. He couldn't speak — his tongue refused to utter a sound — but he drew a note-book and pen- cil hastily from his pocket and wrote down on the page in a hurried hand. " I don't need any. I will go on with you as long as I last. But it doesn't matter so much about me. The important point is to get you back in safety to England." Ivan seized him once more almost roughly by the arm. " Ali," he cried, with passionate vehemence, "if you talk like this you'll drive me mad. Whatever it is, we must share it together. You must take four drops yourself, as I did ; and if we die, we shall die in company, by one another's sides. You shall never leave me, and I will never leave you. We'll struggle through, shoulder to shoulder." He took the flask with a wrench from the unresisting black man, and, unscrew- ing it once more, held it up to his friend's mouth. Ali accepted the proffered drops with his hands crossed in mute resignation. **Let us go Ivan," he said, as he rolled them round and ^ound speech again. *' We can walk better before the sun's up. When it's high in the sky and burning overhead, we can rest again in the shelter of the sage-brush." They rose and shook themselves mechanically like dogs. The gleam in the east fixed the points of the compass for them, and they began to walk towards the unrisen sun. Sleep had rested and refreshed Ivan ; Ali, more wiry and enduring, but physically slighter, felt less relieved by that spell of empty slumber. He had not so much to fall back upon in the way of reserve, and repair was wanting. Moreover, his feet ached terribly. But he said not a word of complaint to discourage hig companion. Patient and silent, he plodded on. TBS DBVIL's DK. M At last, about eleven o'clock, the heat became intense and unendar- able, and Ali could hardly move one weary limb slowly before the other; Yet he went on walking in a mechanical way, though his legs felt as if they did not belong to him, but were a sort of appendage or artificial joint he could stretch out still by a violent effort somehow in front of him. He was wondering in his own heart how much longer he could hold out against this terrible exertion, when suddenly, to his great surprise, Ivan without one word sat down, or rather collapsed, on the bare sand, and, burying his face in his two hands, rocked himself to and frt) wildly in a perfect agony of impotent fatigue. Ali drew the flask for the ladt time reluctantly from his pocket. A few precious drops still remained at the bottom. He drained them fast down Ivan's throat. It was their last taste of food or drink. They might starve now in the midst of the desert. All hope was gone. Death stared them in the face. Ivan's collapse was sudden and abso- lute. Like many strong men, he held out long, but when he failed he failed at once and far more abjectly than his weaker companion. He flung himself flat on his back in the eye of the sun, and waited for death with the stoical resignation of fatigue and despair. A man takes a long time to starve in a temperate climate, when he sits still and does nothing. But in that warping desert, and after that long forced march, death would doubtless be somewhat more merciful to them. They might live through the day, and even the night, in silent misery, but to-morrow's hot sun would surely do for them. There was hope in that — for to such hope were they now reduced. All chance of saving Ivan for Olwen was gone for aver. To starve aa fast as possible was all they could look forward to. Starve ! They must sarve ! But why starve at all ? When one stands so close to a terrible death, why shrink from availing one's self of the means for shortening one's torment ? Englishmen are brought up to treat suicide as a crime, to cling to the last chance of bare life as an actual duty. The Moslem knows no such theory of right. To him, a moment comes at last when suicide is not only Yiot wrong but almost imperative. Ali took out his revolver from his pocket, and toyed with the cartridges. A wild thought flashed across his mind once more. Sup- pose he were to hold it to his forehead and fire 'i Ivan, who would not consent to — to his proposed compromise — as things stood, might, per- haps, when he saw him lying there dead and shattered before him, steel up his courage to the point of With another wild dash, Ivan, opening his eyes, snatched away the revolver, and buried it deep in his own pockets. Horror and fear gave him tongue once more. **Ali," he cried, "I know what you mean. Don't dream of such things. It's quite, quite useless. Let us die here quietly. I could sleep with fatigue. Don't weary me more. I shall soon be insensible." And he groaned aloud. *' Let me die in peace," he moaned out at last, *' by promising me not fco try any such desperate remedies." Ali stifled a groan himself and answered solemnly, ** Ivan, I promise." They lay a long whil« silent once more, in the speechless misery of a 224 TBI ditil's Dim last despair ; and then, after two hours, Ivan again opened hii ejef. *' I've slept," he said, almost inarticulately. "I've dreamt, too — hor- rible dreams. 1 shall die soon. Let's take your note-book and write a few words. Somebody may find our bodies some time or other. A few words to let 01 won know we died for her." "No," Ali answered, quite firmly and dearly. **Let us write nothing. It is better not. Let us leave no record to say who we were or how wo died. Olwen will never know then. All they will say in England is that we disappeared in the Sierra and were never heard of. Don't vex her with the knowledge of how we died, Ivan." Ivan turned over listlessly on his side once more and groaned agai*. He could not speak, but he felt in his heart that the black man'a was the nobler and truer impulse. Day wore on, and the sun, after pouring down upon them hour upon hour with merciless intensity, began at last to sink in the heavens. Both men had relapsed now into a kind of dreary, weary, comatose condition ; they lay on their backs dying in the desert ; they saw and felt and remembered nothing. Evening came on, but still they lay there. The desert stretched white and bare around them. The sage- brush crackled and whispered as it shrank with the change from heat to cold. A strange shiver passed through the sand. A sort of low hum arose from the warped branches. Then a pause came. Some- thing shook them vigorously as they lay on the bare earth. A rumb- ling noise passed through the ground. The noise awoke Mohammad Ali once more. He raised himself feebly on his elbows and gazed around. It was dark now, and growing quite chilly. Deserts are always cold at night. The heat accumulated during the day radiates off rapidly as soon as the sun is gone, through the absence of watery vapour in the air ; and by two o'clock in the morning the cold is often as intense as the heat was sweltering and unendurable at noontide. Ali shivered with the change of temperature. As he did so, some sound seemed to strike his ear. He listened awhile. Surely, surely, he heard something 1 He put his hand to his ear and listened again. Yes, yes, he was sure of it. No European ear would have caught a sound ; but Ali's quick Arab hearing seized upon it at once with Eastern acuteness. It was a noise of something stealing and trickling down a distant ravine. It was — it was, the murmur of water 1 He sprang to his feet in great joy. The very sound of its plash, caught dimly in his ear, seemed to revive and invigorate him as if by magic. The cold, too, gave him fresh strength for the moment. He moistened his lips with a terrible effort, and cried aloud to the uncona- cious Ivan, ** Water 1 Water I " Ivan opened his eyes slowly. ** Where? "he gasped, and closed them quickly again. ** Within a mile or two," Ali answered, almost gay with the prospect, ** I can hear it flowing. Get up, get up — do try, dear Ivan. If only we can reach it, it'll be all right yet." Ivan let his head fall back ouoe more like a atone. ** l^ot ten itepe TBI i>;;:yiL'8 dib. ft.'^ farther,** he ranrmured, ** for life itself. I'm dead beak Let me die^ Ali." Ali stooped down and laid his hand on his brow. It was hot with fever. "Royle,"he said, ** lie still by yourself then. See here, I'll tie my handkerchief to the tallest bit of brush anywhere about. That'll do for a mark when I've found the water. I'll go in search of it, and bring you a flaskful." Without another word — for even words were precious now — Moham- mad Ali tied his white handkerchief to a straggling top of sage-brush a hundred yards oflF, and Btaf:^gered forth, weary and footsore, but ani- mated once more by fresh h(^pe and a wild desire, in the direction from which he thought the sound proceeded. The moon was rising, a tiny crescent, from the desert as he went, and a little light served just to guide his stumbling footsteps. Over the crusted alkali he made his way blindly across the dead plain. After ten minutes struggling he halted and put his hand to either ear alternately. Oh, joy 1 The plash of water fell distinctly on his ear. He summoned up all his courage, with tottering limbs, and walked on once more. He was drawing near to it. Nearer and nearer. The ravine lay black in the shadow before him. A ipring from the mountains mast run down its midst. He stumbled along and looked down over the brink, an abrupt brink, likd the clifia in Cornwall. Hurrah, hurrah I There was water, water. He could see it glistening dimly below — a long series of cataracts, in a tiny stream, bubbling and gurgling down that long dry valley. Without one moment's hesitation, buckling himself to the task, he began to clamber, hand- over-hand, down the wall-like sides of smooth rock that hemmed it in, trusting for foothold to the ledges or holes, and clinging for support to the stems of sage-brush that here and there had rooted themselves deep m the weathered crannies. Half way down, a treacherous stump of the dry brush misled his feet. He tried the next with a violent struggle. It broke short. Moham- mad Ali felt himself slipping. He clutched for support at the tops of the jutting aud overhanging sage-brush. The dry twigs snapped ofl like tinder. He was falling, falling. Dizzy and giddy, clinging as he went to bush after bush of the sapless stuff, he rolled or fell some thir^ feet down, lighting at last on hands and knees upon the naked platform of rock at the bottom. He had checked his fall, but only just checked it. His palms and fingers were horribly torn, his clothes were rent, and his leg was bruised and bleeding freely from the knee to the ankle. Stunned by the fall, he lay there still and half -conscious for a moment, while a hideous vision floated before his mind's eye. He saw Ivan lying, dead and lonely, on the bare desert behind where he had left him, and himself lying, dead and lonely, too, almost within arm's reach of the blessed stream that purled aud bubbled audibly beside him. Then his eyes closed, and he lost consciousness for ten minutes. When they opened again the sound of the gurgling brook at his sidii, louder than before, once more revived him. Ho raised himself on his hands and kneea and crawled* or rather dragged his fainting body, cloM S26 THE dbvil's dik. to the edge. As he neared it, he was aware of a curious sense of being back in London. Something of civilization seemed to strike his mind. It was an odour, a familiar odour, he fancied, that aroused the feeling. He associated it, somehow, with an ironmonger's shop in a street at Hampstead. Was he wandering in his mind, or was it the smell of a lamp? Surely, surely, this xvunt be Hampstead. Ah, horror 1 He bent at last above the limpid bro(jk, that shone and glittered and ran silver in the moonlight. It was well within reach — he could taste it now. But it wasn't water. It had mocked his search. He scooped up a handful in his hollow palm, and held it towards his lips. With a sickening sense of utter despair he flung it from him wildly again. The whole truth flashed across his weary and maddened brain in an awful Awakening. The stream he had risked so much to reach was running, not with water, but with pure petroleum I CHAPTER XLIII. That hideous and utter frustration of all his hopes sent Ali back again into unconsciousness once more. Faint and weak from loss of blood, weary with walking, climbing, and crawling, sick at heart with hope deferred, nay, rather, defeated and brought to naught — he gave himself up at last to final despair, and took willing refuge in the arms of death or insensibility. For hours he lay there in the stupor of fati- gue, like one fast asleep, without turning or waking. When he opened his eyes dreamily again, it was broad daylight, and a smart breeze \^as blowing sharply down the narrow canyon from the mountain region. He sat up, amazed, and gazed with vacant eyes around him. On either side, black walls of rock rose perpendicular to the narrow chink of sky overhead ; so perpendicular that he wondered within himself how he could ever have dreamed in the dark last night of clambering down them so boldly and successfully. To scale them back again would be absolutely impossible, for the sage-brush failed near the bottom of the cliflF, where the rock stood naked, sharp, and sheer as a wall, so that no foothold was anywhere afforded for the first two or three yards of perpendicular surface. But to get up, under any circumstances, would have been simply out of the question, as things now stood. It was at least possible to walk down the canyon. He would try that while his \e^ could carry him. Raising himself with difficulty to his feet, Mohammad Ali gazed awe- •truck down that narrow gap between the rearing mountain of rock that ton'ered unscaleable on either hand. Only a distance of some forty or fifty feet separated the opposite walls of the gorge from one another. That ravine had clearly not been worn by the existing ttream ; a wretched little dribbling thvead of petroleum could never bav9 excavated so deep and wide and precipitous a gorge, even with THE devil's DIB. 327 the illimitable bank of geological time to draw upon for the process. It ^a3 the dry bed of some vast but now diverted river. The canjfon was covered at irregular intervals by long white piles of mouldering matter which Ali at first imagined to be mere heaps of drifted or concreted alkali. But looking closer at the nearest of them all, some ten yards off, he saw to his surprise it was really bones— dried and pulverized and decaying bones — the skeletons of starved and thirsty beasts that had fallen and perished there in the extremity of famine. He dragged himself along feebly to the first in order. The greater part of the skeleton had crumbled away into white dust, but the horns remained untouched in any way, and from them, as well as from the great thigh bones and massive vertebrae he saw at once that the animal to which they belonged had been a prairie buffalo. Had it fallen from the top or wandered up the bed of the stream he won- dered ? Clearly the last, for the skeletons all occupied the central line of the dry, waterless ravine, where they had staggered and fallen, as Ivan staggered and fell yesterday, weary and thirsty and blinded with the alkali. Ali's heart gave one wild pulsation of hope once more at the implication of that undeniable fact. They had staggered up thus far, he felt sure, from the prairie. Then the prairie itself could not after all be so very far distant. Per- haps he might still manage, for Ivan's sake, to reach it. And yet it was far enough for even the buffaloes to have failed and fallen with thirst by the way. How, then, could they two ever hope to reach it ? He crawled on idly, he knew not why, down the baking canyon, for every step cost him agonies of pain, and examined the next heap with useless curiosity. It was somewhat fresher and newier than the last ; the bones in this case were almost all intact, and Ali's trained ana- tomical eye noticed instinctively that the smaller ones were without exception missing. He knew what that meant. The thighs and backbones and ribs were there, but the skull was broken, and the minor tail and neck bones, as well as the digits, were visibly gnawed by teeth of animals. Beasts of prey had followed and devoured the fallen buffalo. Then the buffalo had been pursued up the canyon from the prairie by wolves or coyotes. So much was clear. Perhaps, after all, since the coyotes could reach this point in pursuit of prey, the prairie was nearer than he at first imagined. Further down the gap, as he looked ahead, a still more entire skele- ton lay close by the bubbling stream of petroleum. The Indian drag- ged himself painfully along once more till he was nearly abreast of it by the side of the stream. As he gazed he saw a sight that thrilled him afresh with a profound thrill of hope and expectation. The bonee were bare and white and clear of flosh — licked clean evidently by a pack of coyotes — but there were visible traces of red blood scattered upon the sand that lay around them. That was, indeed a clue to go upon. The buffalo had but recently been killed and eaten. Mohaoimad Ali carefully examined the bare fragments. Tba Muall 22tf THB DKTIL'B DIB. bones had been crunched and cracked, and in many cases eaten, but the larger ones lay siill quite fresh and unbroken in their original positions. An inarticulate cry burst wildly from his lips. He opened his mouth and cried with all his might, but no sound of any sort issued from his organs ; his throat and larynx were too dry and parched for voice or sound at all to frame itself. With the famished rush of a starving man, Mohammad Ali fell fiercely upon the skeleton. It was food, food — food in abundance. He lifted one great thigh-bone high in the air, and dashed it shivering on the naked rock beside him. The bone broke into a dozen fragments, and Ali, going down on hands and knees, and crammed the raw marrow that spurted forth, mad with excitement, into his dry throat, in all the wild joy of rescue from starvation. There was food, food — food — for both of them ; food and drink, for the marrow was still soft and full of juice — the cool liquid giving him heart again to look for Ivan. He ate it ravenously and then broke another. Famine reduces us all to the level of the savage. Bone after bone he smashed against the rock in eager haste, and swallowed the raw fat with all the frantic madness of extreme hunger. At last, when the first edge of his appetite was somewhat appeased, h« lay back and rested. If Ivan had been there AL would have thought first of Ivan. But the one point now was to recruit his strength sufficiently to enable him to return to his fallen companion. Mari'ow was precious ; but even marrow itself — worth ten thousand times its weight in gold just then — must be lavished like waiter — like water, indeed I oh, the irony of language I — for Ivan and Olwen. He took oflf his socks, and rubbed his blistered and swollen feet above and below with the priceless eint- ment. What a sense of relief the rich fat gave him I He rubbed it lightly over his face and hards and neck, all sore and smarting with the warping wind and the astringent alkali. It soothed and quieted the pain at once. After a while, as life and strength returned, he began breaking more small bones, and filling the flaak with their oily liquor. Happily, too, it was not all oil ; a great part of it was fresh animal juice — the best beef tea, in fact, naturally extracted. As soon as the flask was quite full, he went on to break the remaining large bones, and empty the contents into the hollow of hii» hp.t, for h? fortunately wore a round pith helmet. Starving men are not dainty. Food and drink to recruit their strength sufficiently for crossing the rest of the desert — that was the one great thing now to be considered. A hat in such circumstances is quite good enough. If only he could anyhow get back to Ivan I But the more he looked at those perpendicular black walls of rock, the more hopeless did the attempt to scale them seem. He might conceivably have got up empty-handed ; but with the hemlet full of marrow to olog his arms, never, never, infallibly never. Necessity, however, is the mother of invention. As AJi lay on the naked rock and gazed up listlessly at the narrow ohink of grey-blue •ky stretched overhead, it suddenly occurred to him with a burst of thought that bo might first climb up himself and then draw up thf THB DETIL'i DIE. 229 helmet after him. He had no string, indeed, but string can be made ; ft man with % shirt on need never lack for cord on occasion. He pulled off his upper garments, and taking off his shirt, tore the body and sleeves into long and narrow shreds of calico. These he fastened together with knots into a rude rope, and suspended the helmet from the end by three tags, gipsy-kettle fashion, so that it might be pulled up after him without danger of spilling. If only he could scale the bluffs himself, now, all would yet be well. As the food he had eaten began to course more freely through his veins, he regained his usual indomitable courage and energy. Picking his way cautiously up the canyon once more, between the rocks and boulders that strewed its dry bed, where the stream of petro- leum ran in a slender thread down the midst, he reached at last a point above where the rock was riven in a laternal crack on one side, and a practicable ascent might perhaps be ventured. He laid down the helmet with care on the rock, and tying the end of his calico rope to a button-hole of his coat, he began cautiously to scale this lateral open- ing. As he did so, he noticed to his immense surprise that the rent by which he was mounting was quite new — a rift in the rock evidently cloven by some internal force of very recent date indeed. At the moment, he attached no importance to this fact. He merely recognized in a vague way that it must have something to do with the newness of the petroleum stream, whose very recent origin he had observe I earlier by the indications in the central valley. But when a man is climbing a precipice for dear life, with his friend lying possibly deal in the desert before him, he has hardly time or inclination, one may well believe, for geological speculation. Ali only noticed, in a care- less kind of way, that the cleft was new and quite clean cut, because, being nowhere weathered, it afforded him the easier and safer foothold on its sharp ledges ; while, on the other hand, no friendly sage-brush by which to hold on yet grew spontaneous in the fresh cracks, so that he tore his fingers more than once with the glass-like angles of- the new and sharp-cut ciystallino basalt fractures. At last, however, by almost superhuman efforts of Eastern agility he gained tlw top, then leaning over the edge, and pulling at his impro- ^'ised calico rope, he lifted the helmet carefully to the top, and, to his profound joy, succeeded at last in raising it the whole way without once spilling it. The absence of sage-brush, which had proved so dangerous an obstacle in climbing, turned out a distinct advantage here ; for the helmet or the cord would have got hopelessly entangled and con- fused on its way up among the branching bushes. But when at length, all peril over, he stood upon the summit, safe and sound, though bruised and bleeding from a hundred scratches, with that precious stock of fat held securely in his hands, and the liijuid beef tea clasped hard in his coat pocket, he felt the swelling pride of a successful general who has brought his men in good order through a dangerous retreat from some untenable position. An army, they say, fights upon its stomach. Mohammad Ali, engaged in bitter conflict with the wily desert, his anceitnJ foe, felt the f uU force of that profouiid mvUio m be guod 230 THE devil's die. with long and loving looks at the luscious lumps of round raw marrow. Fat without bread or meat is poor food, indeed, in a Belgravian dining- room ; but one learns to appreciate its sterling good points after two days' starvation and drought in an alkali desert. And now came the final absorbing question, how to find his way back to Ivan. That was not so easy a problem by any means as it looked at first sight. Mohammad Ali had a general idea of the direction in which he had tottered and staggered last night to the brink of the ravine ; that sense, too, ran innate in his Arab blood ; but he couldn't see the handkerchief tied to the bush anywhere ; and, indeed, it began to strike him now that a white handkerchief formed but a poor land- mark in the midst of all that white alkaline upland. But still he toiled on, in the general direction where he thought Ivan might finally be found, on the bare chance of spotting at last that fluttering white rag upon the grey sage-bushes. He would have walked till he dropped in search of Ivan ; it was all on earth he had now to live for. He wandered on a long way, halloaing now and again at the top of his voice, and gazing around him for ev* r eagerly, but saw no sign of Ivan anywhere. How he wished he had his revolver in his pocket with him ; he might have fired it off in the air to attract his friend ; and Ivan would then have answered, if answer he could ; but Ivan had wrested it from him last night — that ^'last night" that seemed whole weeks and ^ears away already. No echo came to all hia cries, and he was nearly worn out with tramping, and searching when he at last espied on a distant bush the long looked-for handkerchief of his earnest prayers. It fluttered still upon the big clump of sage ; and a dark object lay stretched at full length upon the hot and baking sand beside it — ominously still and flat, the object. With a sinking heart, Mohammad Ali approached it. He struggled up to the spot, bare-headed, under that fierce sun, with the helmet in his hands, and saw as he neared it a sight that froze for a moment the very blood in his veins after all those manifold terrora and perils. Ivan Royle's body lay helpless on its back upon the bare ground, in the full blaze of the scorching sun, with gaunt and pallid face upturned to the sky, and eyes staring wide with ghastly glaziness in the face of heaven. The look of those eyes, upen but sightless, on the bare desert, moved Mohammad Ali at last to floods of tears. Ivan was dead, then, and all was up. He had come too late. It was useless now. The game was played ; the hand was lost. He might lie down at last himself and die in peace. There was nothing left any longer to fight about. Olwen I Olwen I Poor hopeless Olwen i What would ahe do with* out •ither of them, he wondared. VHB DETIL'l Dili S31 CHAPTER XLIV. He flung himself down, cross-legged, on the desert soil. He, th« eon of the desert, could bear its hardships, and ride them down as a slim ship rides down by her very lightness the heavy seas of the broad Atlantic. But Ivan Royle, stouter of build, yet less wiry and tenacious of frame for all that, had sunk before them as a great galleon sinks and founders under her own weight in the trough of the ocean durmg some wild and frantic tropical cyclone. Mohammad Ali bent over him, breathless. The Englishman's eyes were open wide, and his jaw had fallen as in the throes of death. The tongue within protruded, dry like leather. He seemed emacited and desiccated by the warping wind already. So strange a change was miraculous in the time. The Indian knelt down and listened at his heart. Oh, Allah ! Allah ! it was beat- ing yet 1 There was still life I there was still hope ! The machine was at work, however feebly. It needed only fresh fuel for the furnace to set it going anew. Mohammad Ali, wild with joy, unscrewed the top of the flask and dropped a few drops of the precious liquor upon the parched tongue. Ivan's throat clicked conclusively, and swallowed them down with an eager gulp. Thank God ! thank God 1 he might yet live. He could feel, he could swallow. Ali might save him after all for 01 wen. Drop by drop, the devoted black man poured the precious liquor down his friend's throat ; and slowly, as the moisture and food revived him, Ivan Royle's eyes began to close, and then, after a long and doubt- ful interval, to open again with life and vision once more restored to them. All day long Ali watched and tended him ; hour by hour he came to himself again; and by nightfall Ivan had recovered marvellously. Of course, he was still very weak and footsore ; but the natural beef tea and the rich fat gave him strength rapidly, beyond anything he could have conceived of as possible ; and, by the cool of the evening, he was once more in a condition to renew for a while their painful march. By that time they had eaten the greater part of their little store of provender ; but they felt sure the prairie could not bo f.ir dis- tant, and they hoped against hope that they might still reach it. " Let's try the canyon," Ali suggested, as they were preparing to start. *' The rock there would be easier than this horrible sand ; and there's no alkali underfoot at least, though it blows about, of course, in the air. Besides, the very sound of what seems like water trickling over the stones does one good to hear. It makes one think one's near- ing England." Slowly and painfully, picking their way with care over the burning alkaline soil, they approached the edge of the deep canyon while it WM atiU dusk, and scrambled down by the same practicable cleft which 883 TBS DBTtL's DIB. All Iftwi chosen for the ftscent that morning. The gap was wider now, All noticed to his surprisie, in the same casual way as he had remarked its freshness and newness on his first visit ; and even Ivan, enfeebled *nd weary as he was, looking close at the sharp and jagijed edges, re- marked to his friend as they reached the bottom, *' That's new earth- quake work ; 1 know it's character well by sight. The mountain earth- quakes always rend the basalt like that. This o'^e seems to be quite recent. It must have been done within forty-eight hours." On the dry bed of the canyon, where they walked along, everything now seemed safe enough. The rock under foot was solid and smooth, though so strewn with boulders from time to time that they picked their way among them in places with difficulty. They were walking indeed, on the abandoned course of some mighty river which bad worn the basalt smooth as a pavement, and cut down its channel as straight and naked as a deep railway cutting through high sandstone hills. At first the twilight and starlight alone served to render the deep gloom of that profound gorge into darkness visible. They could just disting- uish the great dim rift of heaven over head, and pick their way, more by groping than by sight, among the huge boulders that strewed their path under foot. After four hours' weary march, as Ivan was beginning to grow almosfc faint and weak with fatigue again, they found themselves suddenly in new surroundings — the canyon debouched, without warning or grada- tion, on a flat and level shelf of open tableland. They emerged at once upon a wide plain. Behind them a terrace of bare black rock rose high like a wall, the terrace through whose midst the canyon was exca- vated In front a sacond terrace stretched for a quarter of a mile or less, and then descended by a similar step into the prairie below. The whole country, in fact, for miles around was composed of successive flights or ledges of rocks, esch of which ended abrubtly in a steep precipice, while the last abutted at length on the general level of the Mississipi basin. The ledge at which they had now arrived was the final step of that vast natural scale or flight of mountain stairs ; below them, at its end, in dim perspective lay the prairie lowland — the goal of their utmost endeavour. That sight once more revived their flagging hopes. Within a quar- ter of a mile of them lay the longed-for prairie. Where there is mairie there there is grass ; and where there is grass, there there is water. Y«.t, even so, they could push on no further without a short spell of rest Hiidsleep. They grasped one another's hands once more in ferventthank- f ulnesB, and lay down silently on the bare rock to recruit their shattered Btrungih for that final eflbrt. All might now be well. The desert was done ; the open prairie lay broad in front of them. When they woke again it was nearly sunrise, and hope streamed from the lighted east ;.^ainst the grim gaunt walls of rearing rock l/ohind them. The two men rose from their bare couch and journeyed I'll, hungry and thirsty once more, to the precipitous edge of that laat plateau. Weary and footsore as they were, it took them more tbaa half an THS setil's dis. 233 hour to cover the quarter mile that lay between themselves and the last ledge. But when they reached it, from its brink they looked down with delight once more upon green grass and bright flowers. The country must be sometimes, at least, visited with rains, or herbage like that could never grow upon it. A few minutes now would bring them out of their trouble. They were fairly free from the rainless belt. They stood on the verge of the lush green prairie. Hurrah ! hurrah I Their troubles were over. That night they should sleep on the grassy prairie. Mohammad Ali clutched his friend's arm eagerly. *' See, Ivan, see I" he cried in wild excitement. " What's that down there ? — do you see yonder, in the valley of the stream we've followed from the canyon ? " Ivan shaded his eyes with his hand wearily, for the sun was now rising, and they were looking due eastward. Its beams fell upon a group of white objects that filled the dale in the near foreground. Ivan's lips trembled for joy. *' A town 1 a town 1 " he cried with trem- ulous eagerness. Yes, yes, it was a town — a real town. No doubt about that. A town with all genuine civilized appliances. Not a mere lodge in the wilderness, like the mining camps ; not a den of thieves like Eagle City ; but a regular town with streets and houses, and church, and public buildings — all of them wooden, indeed, but some of them far from unpretentious in their way, — a town of the best far-prairie order. It was an oil-well city, Ivan saw at a glance ; for the place was full of , the big gaunt derricks that always accompany the petroleum industry. Nay, there was even a branch railroad or tramway across the plain beyond ; they were again well in touch with advanced civilisation. That railway must somewhere join the main line of the Union Pacific ; it must convey the oil from the flourishing outpost they beheld before them to the warehouses of Omaha or to Salt Lake City. Saved, saved, they were saved at last ! In an hour or two more they should rest on abed — they should eat and drink among civilized and kind-hearted fellow-creatures. The revulsion was almtjst too much for their shattered nerves. It blinded and chilled them with excess of happiness. An oil-well settlement on the brink of tile prairie 1 How lucky they had followed the canyon and the petroleum stream I The petroleum stream must supply the town with the oil for export. And yet — A strange doubt flitted before them. How curious, since the stream was there, flowing free to all, there should be all those derricks and all that complicated expensive machin- ery for pumping and raising the oil to the surface. For a moment the apparent contradiction of fact startled and puzzled Mohammad Ali. Then he suddenly remembered the newness of the stream, and the obvious evidence of recent earthiiuake action. Till the day before yestiOrday, the bed of the canyon had long been dry. The oil had only begun to flow from its subterranean bed after the shock of earthquake. Doubtless the derricks would now be useless. Mature herself wm pumping up the oil under altered circunistaucea, 234 THB DETIL'iB DIS. As they climbed down, step by step, with infinite fatip^ue and parched throats, longing for that promised treat of water, Mohammad Ali kept his eyes fixed all the time upon the houses in front of them. Suddenly a cry of wild surprise burst from his lips. It was a cry of fresh and terrible doubt. " What's the matter ? " Ivan asked, astonished at this unexpected and curious revulsion from their supreme delight of the last few moments. Ali clutched his friend's arm a second time nervously. " Matter ! " he cried. '*0h, Ivan, Ivan ! Why, what's the meaning of this ? can you tell me ? There's no gmoke coming from any of the chimneys." Ivan gazed hard and then turned round on him incredulouoly. ** It must be too early," he said, with a falling face. ** None of the fires are lighted by this time." Mohammad Ali shook his head in unspeakable alarm. *' No, no ! " he cried ; " that won't account for it. Some people would be up and stirring long ago. There's always fire soon after sunrise. I see what it is, Ivan. It's a deserted city ! " The tin-covered roofs glistened and shone in the dazzling sun ; the praire smiled with grass and fiowers below them ; the distant view shimmered in the morning light ; but it was with heavy hearts that those two weary and thirsty men turned again to descend ftt last upon the wished-for level. Their dream was gone. It was an unpeopled desert I CHAPTER XLV. At home in England, the red clifla of Polperran, that summer mom« ing, rose above the clear green pools at their base, as jagged and rosy and beautiful as ever. Nature obstinately refuses to suit herself to our moods. She was joyous and bright and clear that day, as if Harry Chichele had never died. Seeta Mayne, wandering along the cliffs by the zigzag path, with Olwen at her side, looked out to sea and sighed and wondered ; for the sea was banded green and purple ; and Olwen — Olwen was almost herself again. But all the world was dull and grey to Seeta. ** Mohammad Ali has been gone a very long time," Olwen murmured quietly, as she sat down on a rock upon the edge of the cliff — that cliff where she had once sat so happy and blithe with the Harry that was not and had never been. ^* I wish he was back again. I do like Ali. He's such a nice fellow. Of course, 1 love you too, dearly, you know darling ; but I can't say how it is, in these last days — ever since ihat^ you kuuw— whutev^r if wm— I