Crawshay, dour and threatening, came a little further into the room. Behind him in the hall was a vision of his escort. Sir Denis looked up from the hearth with a poker in his hand. "My friend," he observed, "it seems to be your unfortunate destiny to be always five minutes too late in life." Crawshay's outstretched hand pointed denouncingly through the window towards the bay. "If I am too late this time," he declared, "then an act of treason has been committed. You know what it means, I suppose, to communicate with the enemy?" Denis shook his head. "As yet," he said, "we have held no communication with our visitors. If you doubt my word, come down on your knees with me and examine these ashes." Crawshay, with a little exclamation, crossed the floor and crouched down by the other's side. A word or two in the topmost document stared at him. The seal of the envelope had melted, and a little thread of green wax had made a strange pattern upon the stones. "Is this the end, then?" he demanded in bewilderment. "It is the end," was the solemn reply. "Perhaps if you take the ashes away with you, you will be able to consider that honours are divided." "You burnt them--yourself?" Crawshay muttered, still wondering. "Every gentleman in this room," Denis replied, "is witness of the fact that I destroyed unopened the packet which I brought from America, barely five minutes ago." Crawshay stood upright once more. He was convinced but puzzled. "Will you tell me what induced you to do this?" he asked. "We will tell you presently. As for the submarine outside, well, as you see, he is still sending up blue lights." Crawshay gathered the ashes together and thrust them into an envelope. "Your friend will be trying some of our Irish whisky, Denis," Michael Dilwyn invited. "We are hoping to make the brand more popular in England before long." CHAPTER XXVIII One by one, the next morning, in all manner of vehicles, the guests left the Castle. Sir Denis bade them farewell, parting with some of them in the leaky hall of his ancestors, and with others out in the stone-flagged courtyard. Crawshay alone lingered, with the obvious air of having something further to say to his host. The two men strolled down together seaward to where the great rocks lay thick upon the stormy beach. "These," Sir Denis pointed out, "are supposed to be the marbles with which the great giant Cathley used to play. Tradition is a little vague upon the subject, but according to some of the legends he was actually an ancestor, and according to others a kind of patron saint.... Just look at my house, Crawshay! What would you do with a place like that?" They turned and faced its crumbling front, majestic in places, squalid in others, one whole wing open to the rain and winds, one great turret still as solid and strong as the rocks themselves.