(his hand's awfully cut, I can tell you; I dressed it myself), it might
have ended, for anything I know, in murder--"

She stopped as the word passed her lips, looked back over her shoulder,
and started violently.

I looked where my companion was looking. The dark figure of a man was
standing, watching us, in the shadow of the elm-tree. I rose directly
to approach him. Naomi recovered her self-possession, and checked me
before I could interfere.

"Who are you?" she asked, turning sharply toward the stranger. "What do
you want there?"

The man stepped out from the shadow into the moonlight, and stood
revealed to us as John Jago.

"I hope I am not intruding?" he said, looking hard at me.

"What do you want?" Naomi repeated.

"I don't wish to disturb you, or to disturb this gentleman," he
proceeded. "When you are quite at leisure, Miss Naomi, you would be
doing me a favor if you would permit me to say a few words to you in
private."

He spoke with the most scrupulous politeness; trying, and trying
vainly, to conceal some strong agitation which was in possession of
him. His wild brown eyes--wilder than ever in the moonlight--rested
entreatingly, with a strange underlying expression of despair, on