“Such might crown my life.  But that happiness, I fear, is not for me—­or not without pain and loss and woe.”

“Well, it’s early days yet!” cried Sir Nathaniel heartily.

The young man turned on him his eyes, which had now grown excessively sad.

“Yesterday—­a few hours ago—­that remark would have given me new hope—­new courage; but since then I have learned too much.”

The old man, skilled in the human heart, did not attempt to argue in such a matter.

“Too early to give in, my boy.”

“I am not of a giving-in kind,” replied the young man earnestly.  “But, after all, it is wise to realise a truth.  And when a man, though he is young, feels as I do—­as I have felt ever since yesterday, when I first saw Mimi’s eyes—­his heart jumps.  He does not need to learn things.  He knows.”

There was silence in the room, during which the twilight stole on imperceptibly.  It was Adam who again broke the silence.

“Do you know, uncle, if we have any second sight in our family?”

“No, not that I ever heard about.  Why?”

“Because,” he answered slowly, “I have a conviction which seems to answer all the conditions of second sight.”

“And then?” asked the old man, much perturbed.

“And then the usual inevitable.  What in the Hebrides and other places, where the Sight is a cult—­a belief—­is called ’the doom’—­the court from which there is no appeal.  I have often heard of second sight—­we have many western Scots in Australia; but I have realised more of its true inwardness in an instant of this afternoon than I did in the whole of my life previously—­a granite wall stretching up to the very heavens, so high and so dark that the eye of God Himself cannot see beyond.  Well, if the Doom must come, it must.  That is all.”

The voice of Sir Nathaniel broke in, smooth and sweet and grave.

“Can there not be a fight for it?  There can for most things.”

“For most things, yes, but for the Doom, no.  What a man can do I shall do.  There will be—­must be—­a fight.  When and where and how I know not, but a fight there will be.  But, after all, what is a man in such a case?”

“Adam, there are three of us.”  Salton looked at his old friend as he spoke, and that old friend’s eyes blazed.

“Ay, three of us,” he said, and his voice rang.

There was again a pause, and Sir Nathaniel endeavoured to get back to less emotional and more neutral ground.

“Tell us of the rest of the meeting.  Remember we are all pledged to this.  It is a fight a l’outrance, and we can afford to throw away or forgo no chance.”

“We shall throw away or lose nothing that we can help.  We fight to win, and the stake is a life—­perhaps more than one—­we shall see.”  Then he went on in a conversational tone, such as he had used when he spoke of the coming to the farm of Edgar Caswall:  “When Mr. Caswall came in, the negro went a short distance away and there remained.  It gave me the idea that he expected to be called, and intended to remain in sight, or within hail.  Then Mimi got another cup and made fresh tea, and we all went on together.”