Vernon turned dizzily to the girl. She stood, statue-like, with the lamp in her hand, and beside her huddled Mitri and Elise. "Bring ropes," he cried to the servants. "We will truss up this beast. The other wolves will find him and learn a lesson." He bound his legs and arms and laid him on a divan. The fire of battle was still in his eyes, but it faded when they fell upon the pale girl. A great pity and tenderness filled him. She swayed to his arms, and her head dropped on his shoulder. He picked her up like a child, and followed the servants to the sea-stair. But first he found Vlastos' whistle, and blew it shrilly. The answer was a furious hammering at the castle door. Far out at sea, in the small hours, the yacht sped eastward with a favouring wind. Behind in the vault of night at a great distance shone a point of brightness, which flickered and fell as if from some mighty fire. The two sat in the stern in that first rapture of comradeship which has no words to fit it. Her head lay in the crook of his arm, and she sighed happily, like one awakened to a summer's dawn from a night of ill dreams. At last he spoke. "Do you know that I have been looking for you for twenty years?" She nestled closer to him. "And I," she said, "have been waiting on you from the beginning of the world." VII DIVUS JOHNSTON "The Emperor assumed the title of _Divus_ or Divine, not of his own desire, but because it was forced upon him by a credulous people."--SUETONIUS, _Lives of the Cæsars_. This story, which you may believe or not as you like, was told me by my friend Mr Peter Thomson of "Jessieville," Maxwell Avenue, Strathbungo, whom I believe to be a man incapable of mendacity, or, indeed, of imagination. He is a prosperous and retired ship's captain, dwelling in the suburbs of Glasgow, who plays two rounds of golf every day of the week, and goes twice every Sunday to a pink, new U. F. Church. You may often see his ample figure, splendidly habited in broadcloth and finished off with one of those square felt hats which are the Scottish emblem of respectability, moving sedately by Mrs Thomson's side down the avenue of "Balmorals" and "Bellevues" where dwell the aristocracy of Strathbungo. It was not there that I met him, however, but in a Clyde steamboat going round the Mull, where I spent a comfortless night on my way to a Highland fishing. It was blowing what he called "a wee bit o' wind," and I could not face the odorous bunks which opened on the dining-room. Seated abaft the funnel, in an atmosphere of ham-and-eggs, bilge, and fresh western breezes, he revealed his heart to me, and this I found in it.