For if this man Czerny--a madman, as I always say--had shot down a servant before this gentle girl, what would he do to me and the others, sworn enemies of his, who could hang him in any city where they might find him; who could, with one word, give his dastardly secret to the world; who could, with a cry, destroy this treasure-house, rock-built though it might be? What hope of mercy had we from such a man? And I was sitting there, it might be, within twenty paces of the room in which he slept; Miss Ruth's hand lay in my own. What hope for her or for me, I ask again? Will you wonder that I said, "None; just none! A thousand times none"! The island itself might well be a mercy beside such a hell as this. "Miss Ruth," said I, coming to myself at last, "how little I thought when you went up to the great cathedral in Nice a short year ago that such a sunny day would end so badly! It is one of the world's lotteries; just that and nothing more. Edmond Czerny is no sane man, as his acts prove. Some day you will blot it all out of your life as a page torn and forgotten. That your husband loved you in Nice, I do believe; and so much being true, he may come to reason again, and reason would give you liberty. If not, there are others who will try--while they live. He must be a rich man, a very rich man, must Edmond Czerny. God alone knows why he should sink to such an employment as this." "He has sunk to it," she said, quickly, "because gold is fed by the love of gold. Oh, yes, he is a rich man, richer than you and I can understand. And yet even my own little fortune must be cast upon the pile. A month ago he compelled me to sign a paper which gives up to him everything I have in the world. He has no more use for me, Jasper; none at all! He has sent my only living relative away from me. When you go back to England they will tell you that I am dead. And it will be true--true; oh, I know that it will be true." She had come to a very low state, I make sure, to utter such a word as this, and it was a sorry thing for me to hear. To console her when I myself was in a parlous plight was just as though one drowning man should hold out his hand to another. To-morrow I myself might be flung into that very ocean whose breakers I could hear rolling over the glass of the curtained windows. And what of little Ruth then? That question I did not answer. Words were on my lips--such words as a driven man may speak--when there came to us from the sea without the boom of a distant gun, and, Miss Ruth springing to her feet, I heard a great bell clang in the house and the rush of men and the pattering of steps; and together, the woman I loved and I, we stood with beating hearts and white faces, and told each other that a ship was on the rocks and that Edmond Czerny's devils were loose. CHAPTER XVIII CHANCE OPENS A GATE FOR JASPER BEGG, AND HE PASSES THROUGH