upon my arm. As he did so, another voice thrilled me with intensest pain and amazement.
"Be quick to bear your message," Eivé said, in rapid guarded tones.
"They have means of vengeance certain and prompt, and they never spare."
Astona departed without seeing us. Eivé closed the door, and Davilo and I, hastily and unperceived, followed the spy to the gate of the enclosure. Some one waited for her there. What passed we could not hear; but, as we saw Astona and another depart, Davilo spoke imprudently aloud—
"She has the secret, and she must die. "Nay" (as I would have expostulated), she is spy, traitress, and assassin, and merits her doom most richly."
"Hist!" said I, "your words may have fallen into other ears;" for I thought that beyond the wall I discerned a crouching figure. If that of a man, however, it was too far off, and dressed in colours too dark, to be clearly seen; and in another instant it had certainly vanished.
"Remember," he urged, "you have heard that one quite as dangerous is under your own roof; and, once more, it is not only your life that is at stake. What you call courage, what seems to us sheer folly, may cost you and others what you value far more than your life. An error of softness now may make your future existence one long and useless remorse."
Half-an-hour later, having warned the women to their rooms—ordering a variety of disinfecting measures in which Martial science excelled while they were needed there—I opened the door of the death chamber
