"This is neither the time nor place to talk of your devotion to me, Brettison. Heaven reward you for it! You have brought me back to a new, even if hopeless, life. Let us now talk of the future." "Yes, yes," said Brettison eagerly, for he had grown uneasy at his friend's words. "There must never be the slightest risk of Myra and that man meeting again. Here in England it would always be possible." "No, no; don't say you will send the poor wretch back to the prison." "No; as I have said before, that is out of the question now, but he must leave England." "Yes; but how?" "You must help me again, Brettison." "Of course, boy; but how?" "You are a wanderer; ready to go anywhere to study plant life?" "Yes." "Then you must select some place to begin with and settle there for a time--say in Brittany, inland or on the coast. Let that man be with you, and his nurse, and always under your eye." "Willingly." "When tired of one place go to another; but he must not be left." "I'll do it," said Brettison eagerly. "I knew you would. But listen; I shall share your task. I'll give up everything to guard against that horror. Will you help me?" "My boy, I tell you, yes; and gladly, too, now that this black shadow is being swept from your life." "Thank you, Brettison. We will start to-morrow, if possible; if not, as soon as it is." "Good. He will be no trouble, and it will be like old times again, Malcolm. Bless you, my boy! It gives me life to see you growing firm and like yourself again. Who's that?" He started as he stood up and clasped Stratton's hand, for there was a sharp double knock at the outer door. "Guest," said Stratton. "There, our plans are made. They are for ourselves alone I trust Guest, but not yet with this." He threw open the inner door, and unfastened the outer, which was drawn from his hand, and the man regarding whom they had been planning, looking intent and strange, strode into the room. "James Barron!" "Yes; I have business with you, sir," he said, in quite his old tone. "Mr Malcolm Stratton, I believe?" CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN. FLASHING BACK TO LIFE. Brettison leaped from his chair, and Stratton literally staggered back against a glass case so violently that a figure upon it toppled over and fell with a crash, as if emblematic of another downfall of all hope. For it seemed incredible. Little more than an hour before they had left this man apparently a helpless imbecile, unable to concentrate his mental faculties save upon one point, and only at certain times upon that, at all others hopelessly blank. While now the vacuity had apparently departed, his face looked eager and animated, and the helpless log had turned into a dangerous enemy, whose fresh coming upon the scene completely upset all calculations, and the question staring them in the face was how to act next.