She had been speaking with some _Thing_. Some _Thing_, dressed in Gilbert's flesh had come smirking into her quiet room. She had held it in her arms and prayed for it. Drum, drum!--She put her left hand, the hand with the wedding ring upon it, over the madly throbbing heart. And then, in her mind, she asked for relief, comfort, help. The response was instant. Her life had always been so fragrant and pure, her aims so single-hearted, her delight in goodness and her love of Jesus so transparently immanent, that she was far nearer the Veil than most of us can ever get. She asked, and the amorphous elemental things of darkness dissolved and fled before heavenly radiance. The Couriers of the Wind of the Holy-Ghost came to her with the ozone of Paradise beating from their wings. Doubtless it was now that some Priest-Angel gave Mary Lothian that last Viaticum which was to be denied to her from the hands of any earthly Priest. It was a week ago that Mr. Medley had brought the Blessed Sacrament to Mary. It was seven days since she had thus met her Lord. But He was with her now. Already of the Saints, although she knew it not, a Cloud of Witnesses surrounded her. Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven were loving her, waiting for her. * * * * * Lothian went along the corridor to the library, which was on the first floor of the house. His footsteps made no noise upon the thick carpet. He walked softly, resolutely, as a man that had much to do. The library was not a large room but it was a very charming one. A bright fire burned upon the hearth. Two comfortable saddle-back chairs of olive-coloured leather stood on either side of it, and there was a real old "gate-table" of dark oak set by one of the chairs with a silver spirit-stand upon it. Along all one side, books rose to the ceiling, his beloved friends of the past, in court-dress of gold and damson colour, in bravery of delicate greens; in leather which had been stained bright orange, some of them; while others showed like crimson aldermen and red Lord Mayors. Let into the wall at the end of the room--opposite to the big Tudor window--was the glass-fronted cupboard in which the guns were kept. The black-blue barrels gleamed in rows, the polished stocks caught the light from the candles upon the mantel-shelf. The huge double eight-bore like a shoulder-cannon ranked next to the pair of ten-bores by Greener. Then came the two powerful twelve-gauge guns by Tolley, chambered for three inch shells and to which many geese had fallen upon the marshes. . . . Lothian opened the glass door and took down one of the heavy ten-bores from the rack. He placed it upon a table, opened a cupboard, took out a leather cartridge bag and put about twenty "perfect" cases of brass, loaded with "smokeless diamond" and "number four" shot, into the bag. Then he rang the bell. "Tell Tumpany to come up," he said to Blanche who answered the summons.