unable to desist. How he could explain to-morrow the burglarious
misdeed to the two odious witches he had no idea. Nevertheless he

inserted the point of his hanger between the two halves of the door
and tried to prize them open. They resisted. He swore, sticking

now hotly to his purpose. His mutter: "I hope you will be
satisfied, confound you," was addressed to the absent Tom. Just

then the doors gave way and flew open.
He was there.

He - the trusty, sagacious, and courageous Tom was there, drawn up
shadowy and stiff, in a prudent silence, which his wide-open eyes

by their fixed gleam seemed to command Byrne to respect. But Byrne
was too startled to make a sound. Amazed, he stepped back a little

- and on the instant the seaman flung himself forward headlong as
if to clasp his officer round the neck. Instinctively Byrne put

out his faltering arms; he felt the horrible rigidity of the body
and then the coldness of death as their heads knocked together and

their faces came into contact. They reeled, Byrne hugging Tom
close to his breast in order not to let him fall with a crash. He

had just strength enough to lower the awful burden gently to the
floor - then his head swam, his legs gave way, and he sank on his

knees, leaning over the body with his hands resting on the breast
of that man once full of generous life, and now as insensible as a

stone.
"Dead! my poor Tom, dead," he repeated mentally. The light of the

lamp standing near the edge of the table fell from above straight
on the stony empty stare of these eyes which naturally had a mobile

and merry expression.
Byrne turned his own away from them. Tom's black silk neckerchief

was not knotted on his breast. It was gone. The murderers had
also taken off his shoes and stockings. And noticing this

spoliation, the exposed throat, the bare up-turned feet, Byrne felt
his eyes run full of tears. In other respects the seaman was fully

dressed; neither was his clothing disarranged as it must have been
in a violent struggle. Only his checked shirt had been pulled a

little out the waistband in one place, just enough to ascertain
whether he had a money belt fastened round his body. Byrne began

to sob into his handkerchief.
It was a nervousoutburst which passed off quickly. Remaining on

his knees he contemplated sadly the athletic body of as fine a
seaman as ever had drawn a cutlass, laid a gun, or passed the

weather earring in a gale, lying stiff and cold, his cheery,
fearless spirit departed - perhaps turning to him, his boy chum, to

his ship out there rolling on the grey seas off an iron-bound
coast, at the very moment of its flight.

He perceived that the six brass buttons of Tom's jacket had been
cut off. He shuddered at the notion of the two miserable and

repulsive witches busying themselves ghoulishly about the
defenceless body of his friend. Cut off. Perhaps with the same

knife which . . . The head of one trembled; the other was bent
double, and their eyes were red and bleared, their infamous claws

unsteady. . . It must have been in this very room too, for Tom
could not have been killed in the open and brought in here

afterwards. Of that Byrne was certain. Yet those devilish crones
could not have killed him themselves even by taking him unawares -

and Tom would be always on his guard of course. Tom was a very
wide awake wary man when engaged on any service. . . And in fact

how did they murder him? Who did? In what way?
Byrne jumped up, snatched the lamp off the table, and stooped

swiftly over the body. The light revealed on the clothing no
stain, no trace, no spot of blood anywhere. Byrne's hands began to

shake so that he had to set the lamp on the floor and turn away his
head in order to recover from this agitation.

Then he began to explore that cold, still, and rigid body for a
stab, a gunshot wound, for the trace of some killing blow. He felt

all over the skull anxiously. It was whole. He slipped his hand
under the neck. It was unbroken. With terrified eyes he peered

close under the chin and saw no marks of strangulation on the
throat.

There were no signs anywhere. He was just dead.
Impulsively Byrne got away from the body as if the mystery of an

incomprehensible death had changed his pity into suspicion and
dread. The lamp on the floor near the set, still face of the

seaman showed it staring at the ceiling as if despairingly. In the
circle of light Byrne saw by the undisturbed patches of thick dust

on the floor that there had been no struggle in that room. "He has
died outside," he thought. Yes, outside in that narrow corridor,

where there was hardly room to turn, the mysterious death had come
to his poor dear Tom. The impulse of snatching up his pistols and

rushing out of the room abandoned Byrne suddenly. For Tom, too,
had been armed - with just such powerless weapons as he himself

possessed - pistols, a cutlass! And Tom had died a nameless death,
by incomprehensible means.

A new thought came to Byrne. That stranger knocking at the door
and fleeing so swiftly at his appearance had come there to remove

the body. Aha! That was the guide the withered witch had promised
would show the English officer the shortest way of rejoining his

man. A promise, he saw it now, of dreadfulimport. He who had
knocked would have two bodies to deal with. Man and officer would

go forth from the house together. For Byrne was certain now that
he would have to die before the morning - and in the same

mysterious manner, leaving behind him an unmarked body.
The sight of a smashed head, of a throat cut, of a gaping gunshot

wound, would have been an inexpressible relief. It would have
soothed all his fears. His soul cried within him to that dead man

whom he had never found wanting in danger. "Why don't you tell me
what I am to look for, Tom? Why don't you?" But in rigid

immobility, extended on his back, he seemed to preserve an austere
silence, as if disdaining in the finality of his awful knowledge to

hold converse with the living.
Suddenly Byrne flung himself on his knees by the side of the body,

and dry-eyed, fierce, opened the shirt wide on the breast, as if to
tear the secret forcibly from that cold heart which had been so

loyal to him in life! Nothing! Nothing! He raised the lamp, and
all the sign vouchsafed to him by that face which used to be so

kindly in expression was a small bruise on the forehead - the least
thing, a mere mark. The skin even was not broken. He stared at it

a long time as if lost in a dreadful dream. Then he observed that
Tom's hands were clenched as though he had fallen facing somebody

in a fight with fists. His knuckles, on closer view, appeared
somewhat abraded. Both hands.

The discovery of these slight signs was more appalling to Byrne
than the absoluteabsence of every mark would have been. So Tom

had died striking against something which could be hit, and yet
could kill one without leaving a wound - by a breath.

Terror, hot terror, began to play about Byrne's heart like a tongue
of flame that touches and withdraws before it turns a thing to

ashes. He backed away from the body as far as he could, then came
forward stealthily casting fearful glances to steal another look at

the bruised forehead. There would perhaps be such a faint bruise
on his own forehead - before the morning.

"I can't bear it," he whispered to himself. Tom was for him now an
object of horror, a sight at once tempting and revolting to his

fear. He couldn't bear to look at him.
At last, desperation getting the better of his increasing horror,

he stepped forward from the wall against which he had been leaning,
seized the corpse under the armpits, and began to lug it over to

the bed. The bare heels of the seaman trailed on the floor
noiselessly. He was heavy with the dead weight of inanimate

objects. With a last effort Byrne landed him face downwards on the
edge of the bed, rolled him over, snatched from under this stiff

passive thing a sheet with which he covered it over. Then he
spread the curtains at head and foot so that joining together as he

shook their folds they hid the bed altogether from his sight.
He stumbled towards a chair, and fell on it. The perspiration

poured from his face for a moment, and then his veins seemed to
carry for a while a thin stream of half, frozen blood. Complete