"I should think so," Van Bleit responded. But he made the alteration in the time. "What on earth do you do with yourself up here? I'd want to cut my throat if I stayed a week." "Oh! it hasn't been half bad. I was getting a bit sick of my own company, though." "All alone, eh?" "All alone," Lawless answered. "It was all right while she was here; but the life was too domesticated for her taste. I was on the point of chucking it myself when I sent you that wire. It occurred to me that this might suit your book." "Awfully decent of you," Van Bleit replied. But his eyes narrowed vindictively. He had a score to pay off against this man. His treatment at the hands of Mrs Lawless was, he felt convinced, attributable to him somehow. Grit had played him false in more ways than one. "It's not a bad little hutch," he said, as he looked round the interior. "Oh! it's all right... A bit cramped." Lawless threw open a door. "The bedrooms lead out," he explained,--"two of them. Boxes, of course; but they serve for single rooms. You and Denzil can make shift for a few nights. I'll bunk up in here." Van Bleit walked into the bedroom. "Nonsense!" he replied decidedly. "We aren't turning you out of your room. Denzil and I will sleep together. I'll not hear of any other arrangement, Grit." "As you like," Lawless answered. Van Bleit went into the inner room. "Check number one, Master Grit," he murmured. Aloud he said: "I'd like a wash, old man. And then, if you've anything to eat, we won't say no." When they were alone together, Van Bleit drew Denzil's attention to the thinness of the partition between the two rooms, and laid a significant finger upon his lips. "Leaks," he said, and winked expressively. He put his eye to a crack in the boarding. "That's where he'll spy upon us when he thinks we're unsuspecting," he whispered, coming back. Then, whistling cheerily, he divested himself of his coat and plunged his face into a basin of cold water. Later, when, having eaten, they sat outside smoking and talking, while the sun dipped below the horizon and the low wind died away, Van Bleit spoke of his trial and the night at the bungalow, giving a word picture of the shooting which by constant repetition he was beginning to believe. The recital made him something of a hero, but it did not reflect well on Colonel Grey. "It was a damned trap," he finished, and blew a cloud of smoke into the quiet air. "People who set traps for me are apt to find themselves ensnared." "I knew Simmonds. He seemed a decent, harmless sort of chap," Lawless remarked after a pause. "I can't associate him with traps, somehow. He lent me ten pounds once, and never bothered me to return it. I'm glad to remember now that I settled my account with him." "I've settled my account with him too," Van Bleit rejoined... "I don't go back on my word whatever the consequences."