last moment of work to be done, and then allow so swift a collapse
when all was over, and he could rest peacefully.

He was certainly a splendid fellow. I think I never saw so fine a
man physically in my life. And if the lesson of his physiognomy be
true, he is as sterling inwardly as his external is fair. "Now,"
said I to Teuta, "we are to all intents quite alone. Tell me all
that has been, so that I may understand."

Whereupon my daughter, making me sit down, knelt beside me, and told
me from end to end the most marvellous story I had ever heard or read
of. Something of it I had already known from the Archbishop
Paleologue's later letters, but of all else I was ignorant. Far away
in the great West beyond the Atlantic, and again on the fringe of the
Eastern seas, I had been thrilled to my heart's core by the heroic
devotion and fortitude of my daughter in yielding herself for her
country's sake to that fearful ordeal of the Crypt; of the grief of
the nation at her reported death, news of which was so mercifully and
wisely withheld from me as long as possible; of the supernatural
rumours that took root so deep; but no word or hint had come to me of
a man who had come across the orbit of her life, much less of all
that has resulted from it. Neither had I known of her being carried
off, or of the thrice gallant rescue of her by Rupert. Little wonder
that I thought so highly of him even at the first moment I had a
clear view of him when he sank down to sleep before me. Why, the man
must be a marvel. Even our mountaineers could not match such
endurance as his. In the course of her narrative my daughter told me
of how, being wearied with her long waiting in the tomb, and waking
to find herself alone when the floods were out, and even the Crypt
submerged, she sought safety and warmth elsewhere; and how she came