“An accident,” said Christina, and she pointed to the coil of rope.  It was no use for her now to say that she had forbidden violence.  Indeed, at no time, as she told Shere, would it have been of any use.  She pushed through the group to where Dennis Shere lay on the ground, his face white and shiny and tortured with pain.  She knelt down on the ground and took his head in her hands as though she would raise it on to her lap, but one man stopped her, saying, “It is his back, senora.”  Shere opened his eyes and saw who it was that bent over him, and Christina, reading their look, was appalled.  It was surely impossible that human eyes could carry so much hate.  His lips moved, and she leaned her ear close to his mouth to catch the words.  But it was only one word he spoke and repeated:—­

“Tricks!  Tricks!”

There was no time to disprove or explain.  Christina had but one argument.  She kissed him on the lips.

“This is no trick,” she cried, and Esteban, laying a hand upon her shoulder, said, “He does not hear, nor can his lips answer;” and Esteban spoke the truth.  Shere had not heard, and never would hear, as Christina knew.

“He still has the letter,” said Esteban.  Christina thrust him back with her hand and crouched over the dead man, protecting him.  In a little she said, “True, there is the letter.”  She unbuttoned Shere’s jacket and gently took the letter from his breast.  Then she knelt back and looked at the superscription without speaking.  Esteban opened the door of the lantern and held the flame towards her.  “No,” said she.  “It had better go to Olvera.”

She rode to Olvera that night.  They let her go, deceived by her composure and thinking that she meant to carry it to “the man of great consequence.”

But Christina’s composure meant nothing more than that her mind and her feelings were numbed.  She was conscious of only one conviction, that Shere must not fail in his duty, since he had staked his honour upon its fulfilment.  And so she rode straight to the commandant’s quarters at Olvera, and telling of an accident to the bearer, handed him the letter.  The commandant read it, and was most politely distressed that Christina should have put herself to so much trouble, for the orders merely recalled his contingent to Ronda in the morning.  It was about this time that Christina began to understand precisely what had happened.

THE SHUTTERED HOUSE.

If ever a man’s pleasures jumped with his duties mine did in the year 1744, when, as a clerk in the service of the Royal African Company of Adventurers, I was despatched to the remote islands of Scilly in search of certain information which, it was believed, Mr. Robert Lovyes alone could impart.  For even a clerk that sits all day conning his ledgers may now and again chance upon a record or name which will tickle his dull fancies with the suggestion of a story.