There was another pause, during which the Marquis groaned in a heartrending manner. Carne remembered with a smile that the family title had been bestowed upon one of the Marquis’ ancestors for bravery on the field of battle. "Two minutes!" As he spoke he stooped and gave the poker a little twist. "Three minutes!" The words were scarce out of his mouth before Lord Laverstock threw up his hands. "You are a heartless being to make me, but I will drink," he cried, and with an ashened face he immediately swallowed the contents of the glass. "Thank you," said Carne politely. The effect produced by the drug was almost instantaneous. A man could scarcely have counted a hundred before the old gentleman, who had evidently resigned himself to his fate, laid himself back in his chair and was fast asleep. "He has succumbed even quicker than I expected," said Carne to himself as he bent over the prostrate figure and listened to his even breathing. "It is, perhaps, just as well that this drug is not known in England. At any rate, on this occasion it has answered my purpose most admirably." At five minutes before seven o’clock a hearse containing the mortal remains of Mrs. O’Halloran, of Great Chesterton Street, South Kensington, entered the yard of Waterloo Station, accompanied by a hansom cab. A special train was in waiting to convey the party, which consisted of the deceased’s brother, a retired Indian officer, and her cousin, the vicar of a Somersetshire parish, to Southampton, where a steam yacht would transport them to Guernsey, in which place the remains were to be interred beside those of her late husband. "I think we may congratulate ourselves, Belton, on having carried it out most successfully," said Carne when the coffin had been carried on board the yacht and placed in the saloon. "As soon as we are under weigh we’ll have this lid off and get the poor old gentleman out. He has had a good spell of it in there, but he may congratulate himself that the ventilating arrangements of his temporary home were so perfectly attended to. Otherwise I should have trembled for the result." A few hours later, having helped his guest to recover consciousness, and having seen him safely locked up in a cabin on board, the yacht put in at a little sea-port town some thirty or forty miles from Southampton Water, and landed two men in time to catch the midnight express to London. The following afternoon they rejoined the yacht a hundred miles or so further down the coast. When they were once more out at sea Carne called the skipper to his cabin. "How has your prisoner conducted himself during our absence?" he asked. "Has he given any trouble? "Not a bit," replied the man. "The poor old buffer’s been too sick to make a row. He sent away his breakfast and his lunch untouched. The only thing he seems to care about is champagne, and that he drinks by the bottle-full. I never saw a better man at his bottle in all my life."