Beyond a doubt Wolf had been selecting the new regent's guard with the same patience and skill with which he had executed his political coup. This guard was composed now only of his tried and trusted henchmen. A single false step on Norman's part would simply play into the wily brute's hands, and he would destroy himself at a single stroke. He must use his brain. He must fight the devil with fire. He must submit for the moment, plan and work and wait with infinite patience, and when the work of patience was complete, then strike and strike to kill. And yet the blood rushed to his heart and strangled with the thought of submission to such a man. But there was no other way. He had himself set the trap of steel he now felt crash into his own flesh. To appeal to his father was unthinkable--his pride forbade it, even if it were possible. To escape was out of the question. Every way had been cut and that by his own order. The mail was inspected. The steamer held no communication with the people of the island. No boat was allowed to land, and no boat, even the smallest sail or row boat, was permitted to a member of the Brotherhood on any pretext. Besides, resignation or flight could not be thought of for another reason. To retreat now and leave thousands of people behind whom he had led into this enterprise would be the act of a coward. There was nothing left except to fight it out on the lines he had himself laid down. The one thing that hurt him most was the ugly suspicion that Barbara must have known something of this deeply laid scheme by which the Wolfs had gained control of the Brotherhood. And yet her surprise had been genuine, her anger real. He couldn't be mistaken about it. To believe her capable of such treachery and double-dealing was to doubt the very existence of truth and purity. And yet, when he recalled how little he really knew of her past life, what dark secrets might lurk in the story of the years she had spent under the same roof with these people, he grew sick at the thought. He knew now that the blond beast with the red scar on his neck and the slender, dark-eyed madonna-like mate who had always been his shadow were capable of anything. Two people who could smile in treacherous silence for a year and suddenly grip the throat of the man who had been their best friend, needed no written biography to tell their past. It was luminous. And in the glare in which he read it he shuddered at the sinister light it threw on the beautiful girl whom they had reared as their own. He took from his mantel a little picture made one day in San Francisco by a tintype man. It was a singularly beautiful likeness of Barbara, taken on a sudden impulse without a moment's thought or preparation. Her laughing face looked out at him, wreathed in a garland of wayward ringlets of dark brown hair. Truth, sincerity, beauty, intelligence, and a childlike innocence were stamped in every line.