bit by bit. But I mistook her, for I read it as you know, and there was the last of her pride, not deigning, as you might say, to put me right when I had thought such a base thing of her. She was free then, but she was it and cut the mattress and filled with horror at the sight stuffed it in the bed. But of him. He had dropped on after hours of cruel thought his knees, and was holding she couldn't keep the secrethis side with both hands while it wasn't in her nature tothe blood ran through ran through his and she thought to tell me fingers. Then she looked down, and saw they weren't alone. That old woman who'd come with Con on to the Warren and been hiding all this while was there. Mariana only thought of one thing, and she said, "Wait with him till I run to the house for help." She came back to the house, and I wasn't in. She had the knife still in her hand. She thought nothing of it then, and she laid it down on the dresser and took an old tablecloth out with her to bind him and stop the bleeding. When she got back they'd both gone. By the sand it looked as if Con had been dragged away, and it came to her all of a sudden that she'd killed him. Then you can guess the agony she suffered sitting there alone on those dreary sandhills and looking at the place where Con's blood had spilled. She felt a weight of guilt on her like lead, and she could think of nothing but how to hide up what she had done from me. In the end she covered the red place up, and spread out the grasses she had cut, and came back. She found me in. Her main fear now was that I had seen the knife. But I hadn't. She took it into the bedroom, and then she dursn't put it anywhere, and she dursn't go out again to bury it. So she cleaned Murdoch paused and stared at the hot embers in the grate for a moment. Then he said, "That's thirty years ago. But it's the silver you're wanting more than the story! When you come to-morrow you'll find the bars here for you to take away. They have to put two horses in to get a cart here." He paused again, then got up and pulled the door ajar and looked out. "If anything should happen to me. . ." he said, and stopped, shut-to the door, and faced his guest with a solemn wistful look on his face that at once disconcerted and embarrassed Mr Brandrith, who felt himself called upon to say something. He therefore tipped his head slightly back, and said with just the flicker of a stammer, "No, no, n-, n-, of course! I mean! . . My dear fellow . . ." Murdoch sat down and gave a resolute tug to the peak of his cap. Then he continued : I say, if anything should happen to me, who'd there be to tell what Mariana suffered from that man, and that she killed him defending herself from shame? Who'd there be to justify her if I kept mum She's your kith and kin, no doubt! She lived for five years after. But she never throve. Yet this business of Con's death seemed to draw us together the same as nothing else could have done, though we were never quite sure if Con had really died or not. And though I searched the Warren, every hill and slope and valley, I could find no trace-of course, that's the way with the sand. In a sense it hides things faster than the sea, but it gives up its dead in lesser time. Once after a high wind Mariana saw the ribs of a man sticking up in a freshblown hollow by the sea, but when we came to take him up he was too short, and had lain there too long for Con. That uncertainty was the worst of all. We never knew when the old woman might not have the law on us. I wouldn't say whether it was that or the curse, but Mariana never throve again. She grew thinner and thinner, and wasted away, and the doctor couldn't say what she died of except that she wasted away. But those five years we were true lovers, such as we couldn't have been if it hadn't been for the accident. And when she died I thought I couldn't but waste away myself, and I wished I might die as soon as God would take me. But perhaps it was part of the curse that I should not. There was a small sum of money that Mrs Owen Jones of Tir Forgan had given me when I was married; and I took that and went out to America to the Klondyke, after I'd packed the things I didn't sell in a loft at Tir Forgan, and put the silver where no one else could find it. Considering the luck that men had up the Yukon, I came off not too bad. But I couldn't get free from the idea that Con was watching wherever I was. Many and many a time I've sat staring at a window on a dark night lest he should come with his glass eye and look in at me when I wasn't expecting. From the Klondyke I came back and joined the army for the war in South Africa. You'd think if they were false fears I might have got rid of them out there, but not a bit of it! The idea of that glass eye haunted me, till in the end, I tell you, I wanted to see it. Yes, I longed to see it. I longed so that after the war I must come back to this very place. Now, if that's not a curse in the name of the Devil running its course, I'd like to know what is! Can there be a worse Hell on Earth than craving to see the thing you most dread? Cae'r Groes was gone to ruin when I came back. The roof had blown off and the sand was nearly half-way up the walls inside and out, the fields and the garden were choked, and some of the walls not to be seen. What had been such a lovely little place, where Anne Jones had fought the sand and tremulous. And now I've found him. A human elbow sticking from the sand was the first I saw, and when I came to uncover the skull there was no mistake, for I saw that glass eye that has haunted me the world over. And then when I had found that, I advertised for the owner of the silver. You'll see fair play, Mr Brandrith, if they speak of her unworthy? -the papers will raise any lie to make a shindy. His manner was cowed and browbeaten. He sat hunched in his corner, staring at the grate rather than at his visitor, not unlike the figure of Anne Jones' husband he had described. He made no attempt to rise in response to his guest's gesture. He looked shrunk, and Brandrith saw by the dim light that his brow shone with moisture. That former feeling of the sinister crept over him. Perhaps indeed the man was mad! He breathed a Good-night," and hastily tiptoed across the room, closing the door softly behind him as if he were leaving the presence of an invalid. Outside the Warrener's house the wind was blowing. It was dark and overcast, so that there were no stars. The moon had not yet risen. Nevertheless the sand showed up an uncertain ghostly white beneath the feet. Brandrith was by no means sure of his way, and walked with extreme cau "Surely-to the best of my tion. In spite of this he made powers-but, of course "That's all I want," said Murdoch, holding up his hand. "To-morrow you'll find find the bars of silver here." The Bank Manager rose. It had struck him more and more as Murdoch had told his tale that the poor man was working himself up with the recitation of his own afflictions. To begin with, his voice had been firm and his manner almost casual. Now his voice was sunk and husky, at times a false step, his foothold gave empty. On the hearth were cross-piled nine rough-cast bars of black-looking metal. A cold trickling sense of the eerie crept over Tom Brandrith. He walked to the foot of the little ladder leading to the upper story, and hailed loudly. No reply came. He was divided between a strong aversion to staying in the house and a power of fascination besetting him to sit and gaze on the bars of silver that he might fairly claim as his own. This last, supplemented by the natural desire to have guidance from the Only Man when he should return, decided him, and he sat down again in the chair he had so lately vacated. There for an hour he remained conning the silver bars, and listening with growing preoccupation to the demon of the chimney trimming its organ pipe responsively to the changes of the growing wind outside. First it had whined, then it had puffed, then it had rummaged. Now it was settled to a deepthroated, persistent roll like heavy waggons lumbering over a bridge. Still no sign of Murdoch. Who would have been there to guard all that silver if he himself had not? The idea set the Banker and the Adventurer in him by the ears, and made him laugh a little and slowly rub his hands. The lamp began to die down. A spiney red ora on the flame showed that the wick was consuming. The wind shook the door and the window panes, and, quite by accident, the little wooden shutter that Murdoch had put up was jolted from its fitment, and crashed to the ground. Brandrith sprang to his feet. The red-fringed flame of the expiring lamp was reflected on the window, staring, malignant, glassy. For an instant the banker was frozen with a horror more intense than he could ever have imagined it possible for a human being to suffer. The next moment he was out on the Warren flying helterskelter in the dark, with the blowing sand stinging him like a malignant host in pursuit. No more was ever heard of Fred Murdoch. From the evidence given to the police it was naturally supposed that the Only Man's brain had been turned by the Fate which he imagined to be haunting him ; that he had contrived to put an end to himself while he lay in a grave he himself had prepared in the sand, or even that he had lain there till he was choked-the sand had poured over the ground like water that night. But no searching was effectual. A long time afterwards, Mr Tom Brandrith settled, at some sacrifice of his collection of rare stamps, a considerable bill for law expenses, having failed to adduce sufficient claim to his own silver, which the Treasury were not long in laying hands on for good and all. FROM THE OUTPOSTS. A TAMER OF CROCODILES. IT was in the year 1911, when I was stationed at Son the west coast of British North Borneo, and during one of my tours through the district on circuit, that I first had occasion to make the acquaintance of a remarkable Malay named Ismail. A man I should say of about fifty years of age, he was short and thick-set in build, and still wonderfully strong and active. From out of his wizened features, crowned by a head of short stubborn grey hair, glistened a pair of small, black, bead-like eyes. His dwelling was one of the many thatched huts composing the village of which he was headman, and which, built in native fashion on piles, stood huddled together under shady groves of coco-nut palms beside the banks of the river Padas. In these picturesque surroundings, with his wife and children Ismail eked out more or less hand-to-mouth existence as a fisherman. a But it was in connection with his extraordinary skill and daring in catching man-eating crocodiles that I first came to hear his name, for his fame had spread abroad throughout the length and breadth of the district because of the calm and fearless manner in which he was known to handle these ferocious monsters after he had caught and landed them. This skill, so report said, was due to an inherited gift by which Ismail could cast over the crocodile some mesmeric spell which made the beast absolutely subservient to his willa gift the secret of which was securely locked up in his breast, as it had been in the breasts of his forefathers, to be passed on only in due season from father to son. I reached his village at about noon. Assembled at the landing-place on the river-bank was a large crowd of natives, including men, women, and children, who, upon seeing my boat approaching, must needs come out to satisfy their curiosity at my arrival. When the boat had been safely tied up to the bank, Ismail stepped forward, and having greeted me, by way of introducing himself, with a "tebek tuan " ("How do you do, sir"), he politely invited me to go up into his house. Here he spread out on the floor a mat for me to sit down on, and regaled me with a cup of refreshing coconut water. Having rolled me a cigarette of native tobacco, and one for himself, he then squatted down in front of me, and began to relate all the village news. Coming to the topic of crocodiles, he told me that in a |