"Practically settled?" repeated Baptiste, when he heard the contents. "Those words have an unpleasant ring somehow. I know not why, but I cannot help fearing that something is wrong." "I too have my presentiments," said Carew, "but I am prepared." At the appointed hour Carew called at the Consulate. He found the consul and Lloyd's agent awaiting him in a room adjoining the principal office. There was a constraint in their manner, which he, watchful for the slightest suspicious indication, detected at once. They were as men who anticipated some momentous event, but who endeavoured to conceal their anxiety. The consul produced a document, and laid it on the desk. "Read this over, please, Mr. Allen, and see that it is correct." Carew glanced down it quickly with an eye trained to legal forms. "It is perfectly correct," he said. "I have a gentleman in the next room who will witness your signature to this statement," proceeded the consul. He opened the door, and Mr. Norton entered the room. The consciousness of impending peril came over Carew's guilty soul, but he seized the pen, and in a firm hand wrote the signature, "Arthur Allen, Barrister-at-law." Mr. Norton now approached the table. He took up the pen as if to sign his name, glanced at the document, and then, raising his head, looked Carew full in the face. "I cannot witness this signature," he said. "It is a forgery!" There was a complete silence for a few moments; then Carew, whose face was pale, but who betrayed no other signs of emotion, said quietly, "Explain your strange words, sir." "It is no good; the game is up, Mr. Carew," replied Norton. "I have a warrant for your arrest, and the police are at the door." "A trap has been laid for me, I see," said Carew, as quietly as before. "This is one of the absurd mistakes you detectives so often make; but I will soon clear it up. Of what am I accused?" Carew was astonished at his own courage in the presence of this extreme disaster, or rather--for it can scarcely be called courage--at his indifference to his fate. He felt as if he were the spectator of a tragedy which was being played by other men, and in which he was not himself an actor--a common state of mind with men in utmost peril.