"Look here," I said roughly. "You've got some strange idea in your head." "No--no; not in my head, Charlie; I was only supposing--putting a case," he broke in hurriedly. "Well, don't suppose--and don't put cases," I cried savagely. "All that has been done is done with; why should you rake it up? Am I likely to do again what I did before?--to put my neck once again in the noose?" "No, Charlie," he faltered--"of course not." "Very well, then--leave it alone," I urged. "I'm worn out, and I need sleep; I mustn't be late to-morrow; there are many things to be seen to." He said he would sit up for a time; at his suggestion I threw myself down on the bed, dressed as I was, and fell asleep. The last vision I had of him was as he sat at the table, with a flaring candle throwing ghostly shadows of him on the wall and ceiling, and with his plucking hands for ever at his lips. He watched me, even as I watched him, out of half-closed eyes; I wondered how much he knew, or how much he guessed. I woke long after daylight, to find him gone. There was for a moment in my heart that little swift pang of excitement that comes to any one of us, when, on waking, we remember some urgent and difficult thing that has to be done before we sleep again--a journey, or an interview, or anything else shut in between sunrise and sunset of one particular date; but no more than that. I had no worldly affairs to set right--no one I need consult; no peace to make with any one. I had long ago told myself that this was right, and that to this end I must surely come. In doing it I was to save two people: the girl in the first place, and the boy in the second. For I knew inevitably that young Arnold Millard would carry out his threat, and that, too, with less hesitation if he found his enemy hidden away, as Murray Olivant was to be hidden away that day. I went again to the marine-store dealer's; saw with satisfaction that the knife was still there. I had money in my pocket--part of the amount that had been handed to me on the previous day by Olivant; I went into the shop, and asked that I might look at the knife. A dingy old man behind the counter adjusted his spectacles to look at me; perhaps he wondered that a tall grey-haired man, with bowed shoulders and with a respectable black suit on, should want such a weapon as that. But he pulled it out of the window, and spread it out before me; I muttered something about wanting it for a present. I pulled it out from its sheath, and felt the edge of it; there was a deadly sharpness about it that made me shudder involuntarily, as I remembered where that sharpness was to be planted.