Part 54 (1/2)

He put his hand up weakly to his temple.

”It's--it's queer--and--and hurty,” he whispered. ”Muhammed? He would make it well.”

She pulled him to her tenderly.

”Does it hurt badly?” she asked. ”Muhammed hasn't come to us--yet.”

He looked wonderingly around him.

”The house--opened--and let us right in,” he mused. ”We came up on the sea--right up--as fast as a train. And Dad? Dad was with us then.”

She looked up questioningly at Aylmer. And he had gathered up the dead Carbineer's cloak and was arranging it against the stern. He made a motion towards it.

”Sleep is all the medicine we can give him,” he advised. ”Let him rest.

Meanwhile we must use the light while we have it.”

She nodded quickly and laid the child gently down. He smiled at her drowsily again, whispered a half-distinguishable appeal to be told when the Moor ”came back,” and then nature's healing hand closed over his eyes. He slept--the deep, dead sleep of exhaustion.

Aylmer raised the lamp. Together they paced the length of their prison.

The gray flags were bare except where the Carbineer's body lay. With a little gesture of compa.s.sion, Aylmer straightened the stiffening limbs, and covered the stern, unfaltering face with the dead man's handkerchief. And then they pa.s.sed on, to confront the hill of rubble which closed the cloister's end. And here they halted, as they looked down.

Claire shuddered.

A gray sleeve emerged from the stones and an open hand seemed to appeal for the help which came all too late. Aylmer dragged fiercely at the ruined wall. A block or two became unseated. These shouldered out others to rumble at their feet.

A gray-clad body became exposed. They looked at it, instinct preparing them to recognize what they saw. Battered and disfigured though it was, they knew it for Miller's face.

For a moment they kept silence, looking at it fixedly. The eyes were open, but death had wiped out from them the imperturbability which they had held through life. Fear had gripped the gray man at the last. Horror had been with him--even panic.

Aylmer leaned down and covered the fear-haunted eyes.

”He has gone, and taken his mystery with him,” he said. ”What his life was we shall never ascertain. What led him to betray us? That is beyond our learning. It may have been no more than fear and the desire to save himself. I think there was something behind it all that has escaped us, but”--he shrugged his shoulders as he looked about him--”what does it matter now?”

He held the lantern at arm's length as he spoke, and looked searchingly round. The gray stone ringed them in relentlessly. Was there any expedient in which they could find a challenge to the arbitrary decree of Fate? He saw none.

The girl at his side watched him. And then her eyes met his. And as he spoke his voice was strangely gentle.

”G.o.d interfered between Landon and his evil purpose, as you said He would. Perhaps, who knows, He may have other mercies reserved for us.

But in any case we must teach each other to be strong.”

She nodded gravely.

”We are in His hands,” she said, ”and nothing can be as terrible as what was threatened us by that vile man. The boy is safe. I have the help of your presence. We must kill imagination with work.”

He looked about him again, doubtfully.

”Work?” he questioned. ”Have we the chance to work?”

”Isn't it obvious,” she said. ”That is a courtyard. Above the ruins which brim it is the sky. If we use our strength and time to pluck a way through that to life again, we shall, at least, not think.”