“It is impossible!” exclaimed the Colonel dogmatically. “Look at the facts,--you come to me out on that sand-bar to induce me to aid you in the search for the Ducie treasure and title papers, their recovery is due to your effort and, in all probability, the restoration of this great estate to its rightful owners.” “Ah,” exclaimed the stranger with intense interest. He look elated, inordinately elated. “And because you had forgotten in the lapse of time--forty years,--the exact spot where you and Archie Ducie hid the box away, and the wind was blowing, and the rain imminent, I put it off--like a fool--and these fiends of river pirates, or gipsies, or what not, got the information from you when you were asleep,--talking in your sleep.” “Subconscious cerebration,” murmured the alienist. “And because they did not exactly understand the terms of architecture you used they brought you down here to force you to point out the spot, and bound and gagged you,--oh,--Hugh, my heart bleeds for you!” “But can’t you think for him a little, Colonel--can’t you advise him? Forty years of seclusion does not fit a man to cope with the world without some preparation for the encounter,--he was in danger of his life, in falling among these thieves. He incurred a jeopardy which I know he esteems even greater. He is on the verge of a most extraordinary cure,--in all my experience I have never known its parallel. Any disastrous chance might yet prevent its completion. Now that he has accomplished all that he so desired to do, can’t you advise him to go back with me to treatment, regimen, safety.” “Not unless I know what ails him,” said the Colonel stoutly. Once more the eyes of Treherne and the stranger met, with that dark and dreadful secret between them. Colonel Kenwynton appraised the glance and its subtle significance, and fell to trembling violently. “It is something that we cannot mention this day,--this day is clear,” said the alienist firmly. “I cannot go back,--I cannot go back,--and meet it there,” cried Treherne wildly. “It is waiting for me,--where I have known it so long. I shall pass the vestibule, perhaps,--but there in the hall”--he paused, shivering. “You see that, as yet, you cannot protect yourself in the world, even now, when you are as sane as the Colonel. But, for the accident that brought these people here, you might have been murdered by those miscreants for the secret hiding-place that had slipped your memory. You might have been heedlessly left on the floor bound and gagged to die. It was the merest chance that I happened to think you might be at Duciehurst.” Treherne was trembling in every fiber. Cold drops of moisture had started on his brow. His eyes were dilated and quickly glancing, as he contemplated this obsession to which neither dared to refer openly, lest the slight bonds that held the mania within bounds, the exhaustion of the spasm of insanity, called the lucid interval, be overstrained and snap at once.