combination wheel. He could open it for he knew the combination. To
open it would be the work of a moment. Why, then, did he hesitate?
Why not pluck it forth and disappear on the morrow? The admiral had
not made a copy, and without the key he might dig up Corsica till the
crack of doom. The flame on the taper crept down. The man gave a
quick movement to his shoulders; it was the shrug, not of impatience
but of resignation. He saw the lock through the haze of a conjured
face. He shut his eyes, but the vision remained. Slowly he drew his
fingers over the flame.

Yet, before the flame died wholly it touched two points of light in the
doorway, the round crystals of a pair of spectacles.

"Two souls with but a single thought!" the secret agent murmured.
"Poor devil! why does he hesitate? Why does he not take it and be
gone? Is he still honest? _Peste_! I must be growing old. I shall
not ruin him, I shall save him. It is not goot politics, but it is
good Christianity. _Schlafen Sie wohl, Hochwohl geboren_!"




CHAPTER XIII

THE WOMAN WHO KNEW

"Don't you sometimes grow weary for an abiding place?" Laura pulled
off her gauntlets and laid her hot hands on the cool lichen-grown
stones of the field-wall. The bridle-rein hung over her arm.
Fitzgerald had drawn his through a stirrup. "Think of wandering here