“He left this charge in my honour: ‘Use your influence to guard her against marrying under circumstances that you would not approve for the woman you loved best in the world.’ With that charge upon me I solemnly tell you that you may come to us as with Harris Haynes’ blessing!” He put her hand in Everard’s and disappeared through the door. The next instant Miss Dolly Ravenden, a heap of indignant fluff, was frowning at him from the wall against which she had staggered. “What a way to come in!” she cried. “You bear! You—you untamed locomotive! Is anything chasing you?” Impulse wild and unreckoning upleaped in the heart of Dick Colton then and there. Without a struggle he gave way to it. Swinging her up in his powerful arms, he set her upon her feet, and bending, kissed her most emphatically upon the lips. Then he went upstairs in two bounds, saying at the first bound: “Good Lord! Now I have ruined myself.” And at the second: “It was her own fault.” And while he was making his Adamite excuse, Miss Ravenden, red, confused, and annoyed because she couldn’t seem to be properly angry, had walked out upon Helga sobbing in Everard’s arms. “Ah,” she said thoughtfully, as she effected a masterly retreat, “it’s in the air to-day.” CHAPTER NINETEEN THE LONE SURVIVOR SLEEP lay heavy and sweet upon Dick Colton that night. Not even the excitement of the prospective man-hunt—for the juggler was to be rounded up on the morrow—could overcome his healthy weariness. The intense and tragic events amid which his life had moved for a fortnight had been a cure for his insomnia as effectual as unexpected. Now when he slept, he slept; great guns could not wake him. In fact, at this particular midnight of September’s last day great guns did not wake him, for the intermittent booming of cannonade for some fifteen minutes had left his happy dreams undisturbed. Not so with the others. Helga was stirring below; the Ravendens were moving about in their respective rooms. Everard was delivering a passionate rhapsody to an elusive match-box, and Mrs. Johnston was addressing the familiar argument regarding the preventive merits of rubber boots to her exasperated husband. Into the submerged consciousness of Dick Colton drifted scraps and fragments of eager talk. “Wreck ashore.... Graveyard Point again.... Won’t need the lanterns.... Drat the rubber boots!... All go together.” Then said the wizard of dreams, who mismanages such things, to Dick Colton: “It was all a phantasy, the imaginings of a moment. The crowded wonders in which you have taken part never happened. There have been no murders; there has been no juggler, no kite-flyer, no mystery. Haynes is alive; you can hear him moving about. You are back where you belong, at the night of the shipwreck, and I have befooled you well with an empty panorama.” “And Dolly?” cried the unhappy dreamer in such a pang of protest that he came broad awake at once. The wizard fled.