somehow chilled the hearer. "Yes. But why?"

Sir Walter was staring, for he had never seen his rather
lackadaisical young friend look like that before. Fisher was looking
at Wilson with lifted lids, and the eyes under them seemed to have
shed or shifted a film, as do the eyes of an eagle.

"Why are you the officer in charge now?" he asked. "Why can you
conduct the inquiry on your own lines now? How did it come about, I
wonder, that the elder officers are not here to interfere with
anything you do?"

Nobody spoke, and nobody can say how soon anyone would have
collected his wits to speak when a noise came from without. It was
the heavy and hollow sound of a blow upon the door of the tower, and
to their shaken spirits it sounded strangely like the hammer of
doom.

The wooden door of the tower moved on its rusty hinges under the
hand that struck it and Prince Michael came into the room. Nobody
had the smallest doubt about his identity. His light clothes, though
frayed with his adventures, were of fine and almost foppish cut, and
he wore a pointed beard, or imperial, perhaps as a further
reminiscence of Louis Napoleon; but he was a much taller and more
graceful man that his prototype. Before anyone could speak he had
silenced everyone for an instant with a slight but splendid gesture
of hospitality.

"Gentlemen," he said, "this is a poor place now, but you are
heartily welcome."