"So be it then. Follow your own fool's way and see whether it will lead you back to the War Prison, or into the arms of Grace Malherb, or into your grave. And I, too, will go my way. Her happiness is my life; not you, or any man living, shall deny me to strive and fight for her to the end. I marvel and mourn for you. Your wits are dulled by the cruel prison yonder. Your senses are held captive by this man." He spoke sorrowfully, then turned away, and before Stark had time to beg for patience and consideration, John Lee hastened into the woods and disappeared. CHAPTER X EYES IN THE DARK Mr. Norcot and his kinsman, the clergyman, were walking together upon a broad terrace before the wool-stapler's dwelling-house. They had dined, and now they smoked their pipes out of doors, for the spring night was mild and clear. Not twenty yards distant, behind the lattice of a little summer-house, a man lay concealed; and it chanced that both speakers came within earshot of him, for the minister, feeling his dinner, proposed to enter the summer-house and sit down there awhile. "'Tis your port wine," he said. "What has a poor priest to do with such liquor?" "He shall have much to do with it, and be a poor priest no more after to-morrow." They sat down within two yards of John Lee. Convinced that Grace must be hidden here in Norcot's house, John was endeavouring to learn her apartment, that when nightfall came he might communicate with her. Through four-and-twenty hours, since his last interview with Cecil Stark, he had toiled without success to find her; to-night he was determined to succeed, for early on the morrow the wedding would take place, if Stark spoke the truth. And now kindly chance threw to him information more valuable than the hiding-place of Grace Malherb. A wedding, indeed, was to be celebrated; but Peter Norcot, not the American, would be bridegroom. The first words that fell upon Lee's ear were spoken by the clergyman. "'Tis a very subtle piece of work; a wonderful stroke; yet I wish you had broke it to any man but me, Peter." "My dear Relton, you're not in an after-dinner humour. 'Twas not that you drank too much port, but too little. I've a hundred dozen of that vintage--put down by a loving father thirty years ago. Well, how like you the thought of five-and-twenty dozen? 'Tis emphatically a clergyman's wine. What potential tone--what tolerance--what breadth of view--what a fine literary flavour to your discourses all lie there!" "To do evil that good may come--a parlous doctrine."