At last, after what seemed like the passage of many hours, they sighted from afar the lights of Wallarroo.  Sybil drew rein, and waited for Beelzebub.

“Which way?” she said.

He pointed to a group of trees upon a knoll some distance from the road, and thither she turned her horse’s head.  Beelzebub rode up beside her.

They left the knoll on one side, and, skirting it, came to a dip in the hill-side.  And here they came at length to the end of their journey—­a journey that to Sybil had seemed endless—­and halted before a wooden shed that had been built for cattle.  A flap of canvas had been nailed above the entrance, behind which a dim light burned.  Sybil dismounted and drew near.

At first she heard no sound; then, as she stood hesitating and uncertain, there came a man’s voice that uttered low, disjointed words.  She thought for a second that someone was praying, and then, with a thrill of horror, she knew otherwise.  The voice was uttering the most fearful curses she had ever heard.

Scarcely knowing what she did, but unable to stand there passively listening, she drew aside the canvas flap and looked in.

In an instant the voice ceased.  There fell a silence, followed by a wild, half-strangled cry.  She had a glimpse of a prone figure in a corner struggling upwards, and then Curtis was before her—­Curtis haggard and agitated as she had never seen him—­pushing her back out of the dim place into the clean starlight without.

“Mrs. Mercer!  Are you mad?” she heard him say.

She resisted his compelling hands; she was strangely composed and undismayed.

“I am coming in,” she said.  “Nothing on earth will keep me back.  That man—­Robin Wentworth—­is a friend of mine.  I am going to see him and speak to him.”

“Impossible!” Curtis said.

But she withstood him unfalteringly.

“It is not impossible.  You must let me pass.  I mean to go to him, and you cannot prevent it.”

He saw the hopelessness of opposing her.  Her eyes told him that it was no whim but steadfast purpose that had brought her there.  He looked beyond her to Beelzebub, but gathered no inspiration in that quarter.

“Let me pass, Mr. Curtis!” said Sybil gently.  “I shall take no harm.  I must see him before he dies.”

And Curtis yielded.  He was worn out by long and fruitless watching, and he could not cope with this fresh emergency.  He yielded to her insistence, and suffered her to pass him.

“He is very far gone,” he said.

XIV

As Sybil entered she heard again that strange, choked cry.  The sick man was struggling to rise, but could not.

She went straight to the narrow pallet on which he lay and bent over him.

“Robin!” she said.

He gave a great start, and became intensely still, lying face downwards, his body twisted, his head on his arm.