Somehow the shine of the steel in my hand gave me courage, as also the crying of the men behind, albeit they did not seem to gain but rather to lose ground. Thirty yards ahead I could see my man running, his head very low, his arms close to his sides, a slender figure with a certain look of deformity. A long beard of some indeterminate colour like hay was blown back over one shoulder. Ever and anon he glanced round as he ran to measure my progress. Suddenly the root of a tree tripped him and he went headlong. But he was agile too, for before I could be upon him, he was up again, and with something that shone like a long thin dagger in his hand, he threw himself upon me as if to take me by surprise. Now, it is very difficult when running hard to put oneself at once into a proper position of defence. And so, as it happened, I was nearly done. But I had been carrying the sword in my hand almost at arm's length. I was conscious of no shock. Only all suddenly my assailant doubled and lay writhing, his dagger still shining in his hand. I stopped and kept wide circling about him, fearing a trick. The moon was shining full on the open clearing of the glade where he had fallen. It was the little lawyer--he who had called himself Wringham Pollixfen Poole. Yet somehow he was different. His beard had grown to be of a curious foreign fashion and colour--but that perhaps might be the effect of the moonlight. He never took his eyes off the shining steel in my hand. "It is poisoned," he groaned, his hand clapped to his breast, "I am a dead man--poisoned, poisoned!" And looking more carefully at what I had simply snatched in haste, I saw that I had in my hand the golden-hilted sword of honour which Lalor Maitland had given to the boy Louis to seal their friendship. But immediately a greater wonder oppressed me, and rendered speechless those who now came panting up--my uncles and Boyd Connoway. The hay-coloured beard and disguises came away, snatched off in the man's death-agony. The shiny brown coat opened to show a spotless ruffled shirt beneath. The wounded man never ceased to exclaim, "It is poisoned! It is poisoned! I am a dead man!" The wig fell off, and as life gave place to the stillness of death, out of the lined and twisted lineaments of the half-deformed lawyer Poole emerged the pale, calm, clear-cut features of Lalor Maitland. CHAPTER XLII THE PLACE OF DREAMS The key of the mystery was brought us by one who seemed the most unlikely person in the world, Boyd Connoway. "And her to come of decent folk down there by Killibegs," he exclaimed in opening the matter; "no rapparees out of Connemara--but O'Neil's blood to a man, both Bridget and all her kindred before her!" "What's the matter now?" said the Fiscal, who with much secret satisfaction had come to have that made plain which had troubled him so sorely before. So Boyd and Jerry brought Bridget Connoway in to the outhouse where the dead man lay.