shout to Madame Barras I struck at him with the heavy
walking-stick. But the creature was not to be taken unaware; he
darted to one side, wrenched the stick out of my hand, and dashed
its heavy-weighted head into my face. I went down in the
bracken, but I carried with me into unconsciousness a vision of
Madame Barras that no shadow of the lengthening years can blur.

She had swung round sharply at the attack behind her, and she
stood bare-haired and bare-shouldered, knee-deep in the golden
bracken, with the glory of the moon on her; her arms hanging, her
lips parted, her great eyes wide with terror - as lovely in her
desperate extremity as a dream, as, a painted picture. I don't
know how long I was down there, but when I finally got up, and,
following along the path behind the spur of rock, came out onto
the open sea, I found Sir Henry Marquis. He was standing with
his hands in the pockets of his loose tweed coat, and he was
cursing softly:

"The ferry and the mainland are patroled . . . I didn't think of
their having an ocean-going yacht . . . ."

A gleam of light was disappearing into the open sea.

He put his hand into his pocket and took out the scraps of torn
paper.

"These notes," he said, "like the ones which you hold in your
bank-vault, were never issued by the Bank of England."

I stammered some incoherent sentence; and the great chief of the