She sighed as the past came back with her brother's wilfulness and folly; but, throwing these weaknesses into the shade, there were all his frank, good qualities, his tenderness to her before the troubles seemed to wrench them apart; the happy hours they had passed with Madelaine as boy and girls together; all happy days--gone for ever, but which seemed to stand out now as parts of Harry's life which were to be remembered to the exclusion of all that was terrible and black. "My brother!" she breathed, as she gazed straight out seaward, and a faint smile passed her lips; "he loved me, and I could always win him over to my side." The thought seemed frozen in her brain, her half-closed eyes opened widely, the pupils dilated, and her lips parted more and more, as she sat there fixed to her seat, the chilly drops gathering on her white brow, and a thrill of horror coursing through her veins. For as she looked she seemed to have conjured up the countenance of her brother, to gaze in there by the open casement--the face as she had seen it last--when he escaped from her bedroom, but not flushed and excited; it was now pale, the eyes hollow, and his hair clinging unkempt about his brow. Was she awake, or was this some evolution of her imagination, or were those old stories true that at certain times the forms of those we loved did return to visit the scenes where they had passed their lives? This then was such a vision of the form of the brother whom she loved; and she gazed wildly, with her eyes starting, excited more than fearing, in the strange exaltation which she felt. Then she sank back in her chair with the chill of dread now emphasised, as she gazed fixedly at the ghastly face, for she saw the lips part as if to speak, and she uttered a low, gasping sound, for from the open window came in a quick hoarse whisper, "Louie, why don't you speak? Are you alone?" END OF VOLUME TWO. Volume 3, Chapter I. FOR LIBERTY AND LIFE. Naturalists and students of animal life tell us that the hunted deer sheds tears in its agony and fear, and that the hare is ignorant of what is before it, for its eyes are strained back in its dread as it watches the stride of the pursuing hounds. The reverse of the latter was the case with Harry Vine, who in his horror and shame could only see forward right into the future. For there before him was himself--handcuffed, in gaol, before the magistrates, taking his trial, sentenced, and then he, the scion of a good family, inflated by the false hopes placed before him by his aunt, dressed in the broad-arrow convict's suit, drudging on in his debased and weary life--the shame, the disgrace of those who loved him, and whom, in those brief moments of agony, he knew he dearly loved. "Better death!" He muttered these words between his teeth, as, in a mad fit of cowardice and despair, he turned suddenly at the end of the rock pier and plunged headlong into the eddying tide.