Of subsequent events, most are so familiar that there is no need to retrace them.  It is to be noted, however, that Robert does not appear again to anybody but Jenny and Doria.  In other words, he does not appear again at all.  His disguise is doffed—­not to be resumed until many months have passed, when once more he leaps out upon the wild ranges of Griante.  No.  While alive enough and close enough to impress both Bendigo and Brendon with his presence as described by Jenny and myself, he has in reality vanished to the void.  The “forgery” again goes to sleep—­as soundly as the real man in Foggintor.

Accident, indeed, modified the original scheme and once more Chance befriended us and enabled us to improve upon the first intention.

My tears fall when I think of my incomparable Jenny and her astounding mastery of minutiae at “Crow’s Nest”—­her finesse and exquisite touch, her kittenlike delicacy, her catlike swiftness and sureness.  The two beings involved were as children in her hands.  Oh, precious phoenix of a woman, you and I were of the same spirit, kneaded into our clay!  Through your father you won it—­and I had it from my mother—­the primeval fire that burns through all obstacles to its inveterate purpose!

I say that accident made a radical alteration of design vital, for I had intended, on the night when Robert Redmayne would come and see Bendigo, to murder the old sailor in his tower room and remove him before morning with my wife’s assistance.  But the victim postponed his own destruction, for upon the night when his death was intended, during my previous conversation with him touching Jenny, I had perceived, by his clumsy glances and evidence of anxiety, that somebody else was in the tower room—­unseen.

There was but one hiding-place and but one man likely to occupy it.  I did not indicate that I had discovered the secret and it was not the detective who gave himself away; but, once alive to his presence, I swiftly marked a flash of light at one of the little ventilation holes in the cupboard and perceived that our sleuth stood hid within it.  My plan of campaign was altered accordingly and to great advantage.  Indeed, to have slain Ben in his house, when I should have appeared instead of the brother he expected, had been a maladroit achievement, contrasted with the far more notable feat of the following night.

Having conveyed the old sailor to the cave, where, on my recent run up the coast after dropping Brendon, I had already looked in and lighted the lamp, I landed behind him and, as his foot touched the shore, the pole-axe fell.  He was dead in an instant and five minutes later his blood ran upon the sand.  Next I dug a grave under the shingle, at a spot destined within half an hour to be covered by the tide.  In less than twenty minutes Bendigo Redmayne reposed beneath three feet of sand and stone and I was on my way back again to “Crow’s Nest.”  There I reported to Brendon that the brothers had met and would expect me again anon.  I smoked a cigarette or two, descended to our little harbour, removed my spade from the launch to the boathouse, took a sack and so set out again.