"And now you know where the real Lady Josceline Justice is," said Farish M\'Kissock drearily, almost as if the savour of his overwhelming revenge on all who had wronged him had cloyed already. "The girl you have here—"

"Never mind about her," Captain Dove interrupted hoarsely, and darted a quick, furtive glance at Slyne, who looked very much as if he had just been struck on the back of the head with a hammer. "What are you going to do about it? That\'s all we want to hear from you."

He had been scarcely less overcome by that most calamitous disclosure than was his unhappy accomplice. And he did not doubt for a moment that Farish M\'Kissock was speaking the truth; although until then he himself had been almost convinced that Sallie must indeed be the dead Earl of Jura\'s daughter. That possibility had been proven so perfectly probable that even the Court of Chancery had accepted it for a fact. But now—

The sudden and cataclysmic collapse of all his own prospects along with hers had spurred Captain Dove\'s momentarily stunned faculties into a perfect frenzy.

"What are you going to do about it?" he demanded again, imperatively, since the other was slow to answer.

"I need do nothing more—to thwart your fine schemes," said Farish M\'Kissock quietly: "for—they will fail. Although it matters little to me now who may rule here, since the last of the old brood lies dead and unburied in Africa; and she was fond of me, too, as I was of her. \'Twas a notable revenge that I took on them-all! And I think ye\'ll allow that I\'ve settled old scores handsomely with the both of you two as well.

"You might maybe murder me yet, to still my tongue, as you\'re thinking, but that would end as ill for yourselves, and I\'m not here for long anyhow. There\'s nothing in this world or the next that will avail you against me now, and—"

His voice died away, wearily. He was gazing into the flickering flames, brooding over his own desperate memories.

"I might murder you, as you say, and in self-defence at that, Farish," replied Captain Dove, in a tone that he was striving to make more friendly. "But—how would it be if we went partners instead? What\'s the use of cutting your nose off to spite your face? There\'s surely enough here for all of us. And your share would more than make up to you for—"

The gaunt wreck in the armchair beside the fire broke into a low, mocking laugh.

"It\'s to close my account with you that I\'m here, Captain Dove," said he implacably, "and not to open a new one."

Captain Dove, his face distorted with impotent fury, darted another devilish look at Slyne, but Slyne was still sitting motionless, staring at the ex-Emir, like one in a trance. Captain Dove glanced again at the stooping figure on the other side of the fireplace, set one foot firm on the floor, and leaped at his enemy like a wild beast.

Farish M\'Kissock fought fiercely, with a strength surprising in one of his enfeebled appearance, had almost succeeded, indeed, in freeing himself from the old man\'s vice-like grip before Slyne at last awoke from his lethargy and, of mechanical instinct, came to Captain Dove\'s assistance. The two of them soon got him down, and then Captain Dove lashed his wrists and ankles securely with a strong fishing-line snatched from a rack on the wall.

"This way with him now," he panted, and, drawing aside a blind panel in the wainscot of the near wall, disclosed a low, wide opening, toward which he pulled their prostrate prisoner by the heels. And together they bundled the groaning body down a steep flight of dry stone steps, into an unlighted cell at one side of the dark tunnel below.

"He\'ll be safe enough in there," said Captain Dove vindictively, as he held up the match he had struck while Slyne, with fumbling fingers, drew its rusty iron outside bolt across the door of the cell. "And it will be easy to get him down the tunnel to the water-gate, too."

"Can anyone get in by the water-gate?" asked Slyne in a breathless whisper.

"I have the key in my pocket," Captain Dove answered shortly, and drew the blind panel back into place as they regained the gun-room together.

There, he made at once for the half-empty decanter upon the table. But Slyne sat down before the fire again, with bent head, as if utterly crushed.

It was self-evident that he had come to believe implicitly in Sallie\'s right to the new identity he had bestowed upon her, had never doubted that the proofs on which that belief had been based were anything but genuine. He could scarcely doubt now that Captain Dove had hoodwinked him from first to last, that Farish M\'Kissock\'s story was the real truth of the matter. And, thus in a moment confronted with the ruinous outcome of his credulity, he could not yet bring his mind to bear on anything but the utter eclipse of all his own golden dreams.

"And so—that fellow Carthew will be Earl of Jura," he said suddenly, and looked up at Captain Dove with a hell of hate aflame behind his dull eyes. "And you\'ve been lying to me all along," he said, in a still, dispassionate voice.

Captain Dove, back in his own chair, better pleased with himself, paused to consider before replying. He had been investigating the pantry and found out how Farish M\'Kissock had come there.

"You\'re wrong, both times," he at length remarked. "I\'ve told you nothing that wasn\'t the truth. All I\'ve said about Sallie, I can prove up to the hilt. And, anyhow, you\'ve been managing the whole business. You\'ve told me often enough not to butt in! You can\'t blame me for any mistake that\'s been made.

"And, what\'s more," he went on, marshalling his ideas, "it remains to be proved that there has been any mistake. You\'re surely not going to take the mere word of a fellow like Farish for that—a mutinous second mate I had to maroon to get rid of him. Anyhow, if you\'re going to lie down and die at his orders, I\'m not. D\'ye see?"

Slyne drew a shaky hand across a damp forehead. He was obviously all unstrung.

"You didn\'t cast any doubt on his story," he muttered.

"There was no need," declared Captain Dove. "Let him disprove yours first. It was you who discovered who Sallie should be. I had no idea whose daughter she was—and neither had she. You and Jobling it was who put two and two together and made out four. I don\'t believe Farish—M\'Kissock, as he calls himself now—could better that."

"Don\'t you believe what he said?" asked Slyne.

"Not me," lied Captain Dove. "The man\'s mad, that\'s what\'s the matter with him. He\'s probably made the whole thing up, just to get even with us, and knowing that we could do little more than contradict it. But—he didn\'t know that we have the Chancery Court behind us now. And that makes all the difference. We\'ve won—and he\'s lost. D\'ye see?

"I was scared at first, I\'ll admit—when he walked in. It was that infernal \'white lady\' tale of yours that upset me. But—you don\'t believe in ghosts! What\'s wrong with you is sh............