"This is the spot--the forest temple--the grove sacred to the memory of that hour--where, only three short years ago, Madeline told me that she loved me! Only three little years ago, and yet I seem to have lived through a cycle since then. Yes, here our lips met in love's first kiss, and here we vowed that nothing on earth should divide us. Poor fools that we were! We did not dream of treachery; we hardly knew there was such a word." He came to a halt by a sturdy young oak at the upper end of the opening. "It was in the bark of this tree that I cut her initials and my own. Here they are still to convince me I am not dreaming of something which never happened. Time's obliterating fingers have dealt tenderly with them, as though the old graybeard knew they were a lover's handiwork, and remembered a far off eon when he was young himself." At this moment the clock of a distant church began to strike the hour. Drelincourt stood listening till the last stroke had died into silence. "Nine of them," he said. "It's time to think of going back to the Cot. At what hour did I leave it? There's the mystery. It must have been near midnight before I fell asleep, dog tired. The rest is an absolute blank till I---- Ah! Some one is calling me. It sounds like Rodd's voice. What can he want with me at this hour?" Taking a silver whistle from his pocket, he put it to his lips and blew. Its keen, shrilly scream cut the silence, like a knife. Two minutes later a man came brushing roughly through the underwood. At the edge of the glade he paused for a moment, while he took off his hat and mopped his brow. Drelincourt stood motionless, his eyes turned upon him. Under his breath he said: "He has the look of one charged with a message of doom." The newcomer, Roden Marsh by name, was Felix Drelincourt's foster brother. He was a tall, gaunt man, with a pronounced stoop of the shoulders which detracted considerably from his height. He had a long, thin face, a high ridged, prominent nose, thoughtful, deep set eyes, and a profusion of straw colored hair parted down the middle. His clothes, generally more or less worn and threadbare--not from necessity, but because he was both indifferent to appearances and parsimoniously inclined--hung loosely on his lean and bony frame. By strangers he was often taken for the village schoolmaster. As he advanced into the glade, any one familiar with his customary phlegmatic and unemotional manner would have seen at once that he was the bearer of no ordinary tidings. "Thank Heaven I have found you!" were his first words, and there could be no doubt of the sincerity with which they were spoken. "It is a small mercy to be thankful for," replied the other, with the ghost of a smile. "A terrible discovery has been made at the Towers." "Those are strong words, my dear Rodd, but they fail to convey any definite idea to my mind. They may mean much or they may mean very little." "Mrs. Drelincourt has been murdered in her sleep."