“The Tocsin!  The Tocsin!  The Tocsin!”—­his brain seemed to be ringing with the words, ringing with them in a note clear as a silver bell.  The Tocsin—­at last!  The woman who so strangely, so wonderfully, so mysteriously had entered into his life, and possessed it, and filled it with a love and yearning that had come to mold and sway and actuate his very existence—­the woman for whom he had fought; for whom he had risked, and gladly risked, his wealth, his name, his honour—­everything; the woman for whose sake he, the Gray Seal, was sought and hounded as the most notorious criminal of the age; she whose cleverness, whose resourcefulness, whose amazing intimacy with the hidden things of the underworld had seemed, indeed, to border on the supernatural; she, the Tocsin—­the woman whose face he had never seen before!  The woman whose face he had never seen before—­and who now was that wretched hag that hobbled along the street before him, begging, whining, and importuning the passers-by to purchase of her pitiful wares!

He laughed a little—­buoyantly.  He had never pictured a first meeting such as this!  A hag?  Yes!  And one as disreputable in appearance as he himself, as Larry the Bat, was disreputable!  But he had seen her eyes!  Inimitable as was her disguise, she could not hide her eyes, or hide the pledge they held of the beauty of form and feature beneath the tattered rags and the touch of a master in the make-up that brought haggard want and age into the face—­and dimly he began to divine the source, the means by which she had acquired the information that for years had enabled her to plan their coups, that had enabled him to execute them under the guise of crime, that for years had seemed beyond all human reach.

Where was she going?  Where was she taking him?  But what did it matter!  The years of waiting were at an end—­the years of mystery in a few moments now would be mystery no more!

Ah!  She had turned from the Bowery, and was heading east.  He shuffled on after her, guardedly, a half block behind.  It was well that Jimmie Dale had disappeared, that he was Larry the Bat again—­the neighbourhood was growing more and more one that Jimmie Dale could not long linger in without attracting attention; while, on the other hand, it was the natural environment of such as Larry the Bat and such as she, who was leading him now to the supreme moment of his life.  Yes, it was that—­the fulfillment of the years!  The thought of it alone filled his mind, his soul; it brushed aside, it blotted out for the time being the danger, the peril, the deadly menace that hung over them both.  It was only that she, the Tocsin, was here—­only that at last they would be together.