"Sunbury is one of the most dangerous spots on earth for me at the present time," he replied. "Two men only were witnesses of my deed, and one of them has lately come to live here. If he should happen to come across me, there is nothing to hinder him from handing me over at once to the nearest magistrate, in which case the few precious days that still remain to us would be lost. I heard about him at the inn when I first arrived, and it was because of this that I so hastily decided to leave the place. I was on my way to the station when I came upon Robin’s castle, and falling asleep there from sheer exhaustion, was found by the boys next morning when they came to play. If it had not been for the illness brought on by exposure and drenching on the night of the storm, I should have been across the sea by this time, so as to place as many miles as possible between him and me. When I plead guilty at the bar, I wish to do so of my own free will, not because force has been brought to bear upon me from outside." "Who can it be?" asked Madelaine anxiously. "Surely no one would do you any harm after all these years." "I should be utterly helpless in his hands if he chose to lodge an accusation against me," answered Gerald. "His name is Thomas Field. He was in Wattie’s hut the night on which I killed the old man, and he saw the whole thing. He was with me when I took my mad plunge into the river, and therefore imagines me to be dead, but he would certainly recognize me if I stayed on here. You told me he fulfilled his promise of writing to tell you of my death. Did he not give you his name when he wrote?" "I got a short letter from a man who signed himself, T.A.F.," said Madelaine. "He sent back your watch and chain at the same time. Why, of course those are Mr. Thomas Algernon Field’s initials! How strange that I never connected them before! He gave me no address, so I was never able to write and ask for further details." "Did he return nothing but the watch?" enquired her husband. "There were some papers I left for him to forward also." "He enclosed your diary," replied Madelaine, "but he said your papers had been lost in the river when you were drowned." "Surely I could not have been absent-minded enough to put them into my pocket again!" exclaimed Gerald. "I am certain that I handed them over to him in the hut, but the truth is that I was in such a state of mind at the time, that I may have picked them up again without knowing it. They were documents concerning a piece of land that I had staked out away up in the wilds as a sort of speculation, and I asked him to advise you about it. It wasn’t worth very much, and probably would have turned out a failure as most of my ventures have done, but I wanted you to know it was there, in case you might have made a few pounds on it. I should like to ask Field about it, only that I dare not face him again."