“Mr. Imroth,” I said, rising upon the impulse. “I will cable at once to Vienna, saying that I have no evidence to offer, and the girl Lisette will be discharged. Go where you will, but leave England. To-night I spare you. But should you cross my path again, I will hang you as surely as there is an Almighty God to judge your deeds and punish you for them. That is my last word to you. I pray with all my soul that I shall never see your face again.” He did not move, uttered no sound, sat like a figure of stone in his chair. And so I left him and went out into the night. * * * * * For I was going to Joan, to bear to her the supreme tidings of my message, to lay this gift of knowledge at her feet, and in those eyes so dear to read the truth which, beyond all else on earth, was my desire. EPILOGUE. THE EPILOGUE OF TIMOTHY McSHANUS, JOURNALIST. My friend Mulock in his “Magnus and Morna,” has written that “ye should drink at a wedding with discerning lest you lose the way upon a straight road afterwards.” ’Tis no man I am to quarrel with a precept so honest or a reflection upon matrimony so prudent. We shall drink at the Goldsmith Club this night to the lost liberty of my dear comrade Ean Fabos, and would that it could be with that same measure the poet speaks of. If I doubt me of the possibility, ’tis to remember with Horace, that wine is mighty to inspire new hopes, and able to drown the bitterness of cares. Shall we reflect upon this loss to our club, and to society, with parched throats, and a hand upon the soda-water syphon? Bacchus and the Corybantes forbid! We will drown it in the best—at my dear friend’s request, and, as he would wish it, ah, noble heart!—at his expense. He was married at the Parish Church in Hampstead, you should know, and Timothy McShanus it was who gave the bride away. The little witch of a shepherdess that has carried honest men twice round the world and back again, set other women weeping, and come at last to that sure port which Destiny had built for her—was she changed from the black-eyed minx I saw at Kensington, less mischievous, less sprightly, more of a woman, not so much the pretty child of the school-books? No, I say, a thousand times, no! There is golden light about her path, and all the spirits of laughter shine in her eyes. Could I search all the cities for a wife for my friend, this is the dear heart I would choose for him; this the companion I would name for his blessing. She has won a brave man’s love, and is happy therein. God be good to her, says old Timothy—and he is one that has read the heart of women.