"Gowrie," cried Herries, who was on his feet, "you knew all along!" "Nae, nae, ye'll nae mack me compromise maesel in yon way. I hed ma suspeecions, though no o' her." "Say plainly," Herries rapped the table, "is Mrs. Narby guilty or----?" "I'm nae varra sure." "Captain Kyles?" he appealed to the skipper, who stood by Mrs. Narby, with folded arms and a grim smile. "I accuse the son." "It's a bloomin' lie," panted the landlady, who looked a gruesome object, with her grey hair disarranged and her bonnet askew. "It wos me who cut th' ole man's 'orrid throat. Pope wouldn't 'urt a fly. I did h'it fur the tin, so es t' 'elp Pope t' be a great man." "You don't seem to be surprised, Señora Guzman," said Herries, looking at the composed face of the Mexican lady. "Captain Kyles told me long ago that Pope Narby was guilty." "Me! Me! Me!" declared Mrs. Narby with vehemence, and wreathed her old arms round the shaking, drooping figure of her miserable son. "Aye, aye," commented the sage, pointing with the stem of his pipe, "mark hoo th' mither-luve rins thro' a' th' wand. Yon's Alfred Tennyson, I'm theenkin'." Herries, who was the person principally interested, seeing that on the truth of this statement depended the possession of fifty thousand a year, turned to the mother and son. "Which one of you did it?" he demanded. "I must know for certain." Pope made no reply, for his tongue clove to the roof of his palate, and Mrs. Narby, wiping his damp brow with her handkerchief, replied for him. "I tell you I killed yer bloomin' uncle." "And I say that Pope Narby did," declared the skipper decisively. "And I," cried Maud, rising suddenly and stretching out her arm in a threatening manner, "I say that Bruce Kyles is the assassin." Señora Guzman leaned across the table, and pushed Maud back on to the divan. "If you dare to say that, I'll have you thrown overboard. Bruce," she addressed the Captain imperiously, "tell them what happened on that night. Mr. Herries knows that we came to England to get money for the expedition; he knows that you made love to Maud by my order, so that Sir Simon should help us; and he has been told that Sir Simon wrote a letter saying that this woman," she pointed to the indignant Maud, "was disinherited, and that he would meet you at the inn to pay you to give her up. Give her up," laughed the lady insultingly, "a woman for whom he did not care two straws while I lived to be his wife." "It's a lie--a lie. Bruce, Bruce, you love me, me only," and Maud looked at her quondam lover with agonised appeal. "I don't love you at all," mumbled the skipper in the most brazen manner, and cutting anything but an heroic figure, "you knew that I was engaged to Señora Guzman, and yet you wanted me to throw her over and be your husband. I never had any intention of marrying you. All I wanted was to get money out of your father, and----" "Oh, cut it short, you hound," interrupted Herries fiercely. Kyles turned livid.