Observing carefully the direction from which the man came, looking to see if his fingers had left any marks on the wall along which he had felt his way in the dark, regarding the sides of the passage that ran round the balcony over the hall, Bevill discovered some signs of that man's advance towards him. He saw that, before this midnight wanderer through the house had drawn close to him, he had come from the farther or northern part of it. He perceived, also, at twenty paces from the spot where he himself had stood listening to the approach of his footfall, a shred, a wisp, of black ribbon lying on the floor. Stooping to look at this, while doubting for the moment if it might not have been some ribbon that had fallen from Sylvia's black robe ere she quitted the Weiss Haus some ten days before, he understood that such was not the case. The piece of ribbon had at its end a little tag, showing that it came from some "point" or aglet of a man's dress, worn either at his wrist or knee. He noticed, too, that it was clean cut as though with a knife or other sharp weapon; while, picking it up, he discovered that it was damp and that the dampness left a red stain on the finger and thumb between which he held it. Then Bevill understood. "It is from the man's sleeve-point," he said to himself. "Another man's rapier has cut it asunder ere transfixing his arm. There has, indeed, been an encounter in this house." Going still farther down the passage, he came to an open room, a little apartment that was more an alcove than a room in actual fact. Here there was no longer a possibility of doubt left as to what had taken place. A table of quaint Eastern make was half overturned and leant against a wall, two chairs were entirely so, a man's hat lay on the floor, and the carpet was splashed with blood. Also the window was open to the balcony, and against the balcony there stood a ladder reaching to it from the path below. [Illustration: "A man's hat lay on the floor."--_p_. 699.] "So, so!" Bevill said to himself, interpreting these signs easily enough. "The one was here, the other came and found him, and--they fought. Yet, it may be, each thought the other someone else and thought me that someone. Whom else should they seek? 'Tis very well. I have been shrewdly watched. Yet who were _they?_ Is that far to discover? There can be but two in this land who thrust against my life and security--the one whose grudge is undying, the other who deems me his rival." He took up now the hat lying on the floor, and, in the dim light of the rain-soaked dawn, turned it over and regarded the lining to see if that might tell him aught. Unhappily, however, it told him nothing. The day had not yet come for hat-makers to stamp their names inside their wares, and there was no private mark to testify to whom this hat belonged.