"Keep your faces hidden as much as you can!" whispered Whiteclett. There was enough light in the open door to silhouette a figure as it entered, and a moment later I saw for an instant quite distinctly the outline of that oilskinned man once more. And then for perhaps three long seconds he was lost in the gloom within and we only knew of his approach by the sound of his footsteps. Abruptly they stopped. He was little more than a couple of paces from us now and I thought I heard him move back a step. Probably he had seen the white of some one's face. There was a little click and Whiteclett's torch flashed full on him. In that instant I saw his hand rise, and with my head down I charged him. The report of his pistol rang through the barn and almost simultaneously down he came, and I had a firm grip of those oilskins at last. How the man fought! Not till I was sitting on his legs and Jack and the doctor each had an arm pinned to the floor did he cease to struggle, and even then he did not cease to swear. Sir Francis standing up over him, with the torch in his own hand, now turned the light on to his face. When I saw what it revealed I nearly let go our prisoner's legs through sheer bewilderment. For there in the torch's bright circle lay the poor idiot Jock, cursing us in fluent German. XVII THE REST OF THE TRUTH "Does any one know him?" demanded my uncle. "It's the Scollays' idiot son!" I gasped. I heard an exclamation both from Jean and the doctor. "Son?" said Jean. "What! Did you think Jock was a Scollay?" "He was sent up here about a couple of years ago to be looked after by these Scollays," explained the doctor. "We always supposed he was somebody's--?" he glanced at Jean and hesitated--"er--somebody's son." "Good Heavens!" I cried. "What a fool I've been!" Swiftly I ran over in my mind my first night with the Scollay household. Had I ever been told Jock was a son? No, I had simply assumed it, and gone on that assumption without ever once thinking anything more about the matter. And so, with this impenetrable curtain between me and all possibility of guessing the truth I had gone on uselessly groping. "Fool!" A harsh voice startled me. It was Jock, gazing viciously up at me and talking guttural English now. His face was still framed in the circle of the torch, and as I looked at it now I realised that the truth had actually been written there all the time for a closely observing eye to read. This man's features differed vitally from the Scollays' and, especially, there was no cast in his eyes. "Fool!" he snarled, "yes, you have been a damned fool, you Hobhouse! Ach, if I had known, you should have been a dead fool!" "You mean if you hadn't been made a bit of a fool of too?" I suggested. He was a brave man and a useful man to his country, but the German boastfulness would out. "Ach, but I should have found you out soon! Me, you would have found out never!"