To argue with Adam Andinnian had been always about as profitable as to tell a ship to sail against the wind. So Karl said no more about strength. "The chance that such a necessity may arise, Adam, and the difficulty and danger that would attend it----" "What necessity?" interrupted Adam. "Of your requiring a medical man. Your wife will want one; but that's different: she is supposed to live here alone, and you will of course take care to keep out of the way at that time. But the other thought does cross my mind anxiously now and again." "Karlo, old man, you were always one of the anxious ones. I am content to leave problems alone until they arise. It is the best way." "Sometimes it may be; not always. Of course all these thoughts turn round to one point, Adam--the urgent expediency there exists for your quitting the Maze." "And I am not going to quit it." "The advance of those people on Saturday night; the studied tramp, as I thought it, of policemen, gave me a fright, Adam. Let us suppose such a thing for a moment as that they were coming after you! No earthly aid could have shielded you." "But they were not coming after me, you see; they were but carrying some poor dead man to his home on my estate. The same fear may apply wherever I go." "No, it could not. It could apply to nowhere as it does to here. In some place abroad, Adam, you would be comparatively secure and safe. I am convinced that this locality is, of all, the most dangerous." "If I were already at the same place you mention, wherever that may be--an inaccessible island in the icy seas, say--I should undoubtedly be more out of the reach of English constables and warders than I am now: but as matters stand, Karl, I am safer here, because the danger to me would lie in getting away. I shall not attempt to do it." Karl paused for a few minutes before he resumed. His brother, sitting near the shaded lamp, was turning over the pages of the "Art Journal," a copy of which Mrs. Grey had brought from London. "How came you to know Smith, Adam?" "How came I to know Smith!" repeated Sir Adam. "To tell you the truth, Karl, Smith saved me. But for his sheltering me in the time you know of, I should not be at liberty now; probably not in life. Until then he was a stranger." "And for saving you he exacts his black mail." "Little blame to him for it," returned Sir Adam, with a half laugh. "I believe that the man is keeping you here," continued Karl; "that you dare not go away unless he lifts his finger." "Naturally he is anxious for my safety, Karl; for the sake of his own self-interest." "Precisely so. He would rather keep you here in danger than suffer you to escape to freedom. Do you know anything of his antecedents?" "Nothing. For all I can tell, as to who or what the man was before that night he rescued me, he might have dropped from the moon." "And since then it has been the business of your life to conciliate him, Adam!"