The Princess Genevra lifted her face instantly, a startled expression in her eyes.

“Agnes, you forget yourself!”

“My dear,” murmured Lady Agnes sleepily, “forgive me, but I have such a shockingly absent mind.”  She was asleep a moment later.

In the meantime, Bobby Browne, disdaining all commands and entreaties, refused to be put to bed until he had related the story of their capture and the subsequent events that made the night memorable.  He talked rapidly, feverishly, as if every particle of energy was necessary to the task of justifying himself in some measure for the night’s mishap.  He sat with his rigid arm about his wife’s shoulders.  Drusilla was stroking one of his hands in a half-conscious manner, her eyes staring past his face toward the dark forest from which he had come.  Mr. Britt was ordering brandy and wine for his trembling client.

“After all,” said Browne, hoarse with nervousness, “there is some good to be derived from our experiences, hard as it may be to believe.  I have found out the means by which Rasula intends to destroy every living creature in the chateau.”  He made this statement at the close of the brief, spasmodic recital covering the events of the night.  Every one drew nearer.  Chase threw off his spell of languidness and looked hard at the speaker.  “Rasula coolly asked me, at one of our resting places, if there had been any symptoms of poisoning among us.  I mentioned Pong and the servants.  The devil laughed gleefully in my face and told me that it was but the beginning.  I tell you.  Chase, we can’t escape the diabolical scheme he has arranged.  We are all to be poisoned—­I don’t see how we can avoid it if we stay here much longer.  It is to be a case of slow death by the most insidious scheme of poisoning imaginable, or, on the other hand, death by starvation and thirst.  The water that comes to us from the springs up there in the hills is to be poisoned by those devils.”

There were exclamations of unbelief, followed by the sharp realisation that he was, after all, pronouncing doom upon each and every one of those who listened.

“Rasula knows that we have no means of securing water except from the springs.  Several days ago his men dumped a great quantity of some sort of poison into the stream—­a poison that is used in washing or polishing the rubies, whatever it is.  Well, that put the idea into his head.  He is going about it shrewdly, systematically.  I heard him giving instructions to one of his lieutenants.  He thought I was still unconscious from a blow I received when I tried to interfere in behalf of Lady Agnes, who was being roughly dragged along the mountain road.  Day and night a detachment of men are to be employed at the springs, deliberately engaged in the attempt to change the flow of pure water into a slow, subtle, deadly poison, the effects of which will not be immediately fatal, but positively so in the course of a few days.  Every drop of water that we drink or use in any way will be polluted with this deadly cyanide.  It’s only a question of time.  In the end we shall sicken and die as with the scourge.  They will call it the plague!”