“This will do to fight the jaguars with,” he said coolly, pocketing the lean, ugly dagger just as if he had not seen her face in the square patch of light from the dining-room door as she ran past him. “I’ll attend to that, if you’ll catch your charge. Hold on, that’s not the way!” “It’s the way I’m going,” she replied savagely. She began to run as once before she had run down that path; every turn of it seemed familiar to her, even in the veiled light. She took no more thought for Heriot than if he had been a dog; he had the dagger; let him take care of himself. Round the great boulders, through the thickets of flowers, she fled as one possessed; hatred at her heart, jealousy tearing her. Heriot, stumbling over the tough, trailing vines, missing the dim track a hundred times, was soon far behind. The more he hurried, the less he got on. He had taken the dagger from her because he had seen red murder in her eyes, yet now he almost wished she had it. He knew from instinct that there was more abroad in the woods than Raimond Erle and the girl he had decoyed away. Yet not a sound reached him as he doggedly followed the governess. He gave a sudden, contemptuous laugh at himself for being mixed up in such a wild-goose chase--and at Erle, who had had to cajole a girl to go with him by a lie! The next instant he laughed no longer. He was out of the wooded path on the open shore. Before him was the dark figure of Andria Erle, standing motionless; as he came up to her she pointed dumbly. The moon had risen, and perfectly distinct on the calm waves of the bay was a boat with a solitary figure in it, a man rowing with a quick, ill-tempered stroke. “She left him. She hasn’t gone with him!” Heriot exclaimed. “But where is she?” “I don’t know,” answered Andria, with chattering teeth. What would have seemed nothing in another place was eery here, after the strange story of that other girl who sang to animals. And yet her heart was lighter as she turned away. It was something, at least, that Beryl had not gone to the yacht. But now that her passion of rage and fear was dead, she dared not go back to the house by that path she had been warned not to use in broad daylight. It was by the long way that she hurried Heriot to the house; yet it was he, not she, who was nervous about the girl who had gone back alone. If Egerton’s tale were true, neither the madman nor his dreadful familiars would hurt Beryl; but still Andria winced when they reached the house and found she had not come in. “What shall we do?” She sat down on the door-steps sick at heart. “Go and look for her. At least, I will. You stay here,” but he had not gone twenty yards when he recoiled. “Did you call?” he cried sharply. “No one did,” but through her words there came the echo of a faint cry, low and wailing like a lost soul. Heriot, running as if he had been shot out of a gun, made for the moonlit woods. CHAPTER XXIV. THE MADMAN.