the darkened room, had always cowed me while he lived. It seemed to
me that my father's death, though I ought to feel it more keenly,
made strangely little difference to _him_.

"You will need sleep," said Plinny, who had been waiting for me on
the landing.

I told her that she might get my bed ready, but I would first take a
turn in the garden. I tiptoed downstairs. The floor of the
summer-house had been washed. The vane on its conical roof sparkled
in the sunlight. I stood before it, attempting to picture the
tragedy of which, here in the clear morning, it told nothing to help
me. My thoughts were still running on Captain Coffin and the French
prisoner. Plinny--for I had questioned her cautiously--plainly knew
nothing of any such man. They might, however, have entered by the
side-gate. I stepped back under the apple-tree by the flagstaff,
measuring with my eye the distance between this side-gate and the
summer-house. As I did so, my foot struck against something in the
tall grass under the tree, and I stooped and picked it up--a pair of
gold-rimmed eyeglasses!



CHAPTER XII.


THE BLOODSTAIN ON THE STILE.

My father, in erecting a flagstaff before his summer-house, had
chosen to plant it on a granite millstone, or rather, had sunk its