The hideous and mysterious “smile” had come again, and, brief though it was, its passing found the boy’s sister lying on the ground in a dead faint, the boy’s stepmother cowering back, with covered eyes and shrill, affrighted screams, and the boy’s father leaning, shaken and white, against the empty case and nursing a bleeding hand.

In an instant the whole place was in an uproar.  “It smiled again!  It smiled again!” ran in broken gasps from lip to lip; but through it all Cleek stood there, clutching the frightened child close to him, but not saying one word, not making one sound.  Across the dark arena came a rush of running footsteps, and presently Senor Sperati came panting up, breathless and pale with excitement.

“What’s the matter?  What’s wrong?” he cried.  “Is it the lion again?  Is the boy killed?  Speak up!”

“No,” said Cleek very quietly, “nor will he be.  The father will do the trick to-night, not the son.  We’ve had a fright and a lesson, that’s all.”  And, putting the sobbing child from him, he caught young Scarmelli’s arm and hurried him away.  “Take me somewhere that we can talk in safety,” he said.  “We are on the threshold of the end, Scarmelli, and I want your help.”

“Oh, Mr. Cleek, have you any idea—­any clue?”

“Yes, more than a clue.  I know how, but I have not yet discovered why.  Now, if you know, tell me what did the chevalier mean, what did his wife mean, when they spoke of a dream that might have come true, but didn’t?  Do you know?  Have you any idea?  Or, if you have not, do you think your fiancee has?”

“Why, yes,” he made reply.  “Zelie has told me about it often.  It is of a fortune that was promised and never materialized.  Oh, such a long time ago, when he was quite a young man, the chevalier saved the life of a very great man, a Prussian nobleman of great wealth.  He was profuse in his thanks and his promises, that nobleman; swore that he would make him independent for life, and all that sort of thing.”

“And didn’t?”

“No, he didn’t.  After a dozen letters promising the chevalier things that almost turned his head, the man dropped him entirely.  In the midst of his dreams of wealth a letter came from the old skinflint’s steward enclosing him the sum of six hundred marks, and telling him that as his master had come to the conclusion that wealth would be more of a curse than a blessing to a man of his class and station, he had thought better of his rash promise.  He begged to tender the enclosed as a proper and sufficient reward for the service rendered, and ’should not trouble the young man any further.’  Of course, the chevalier didn’t reply.  Who would, after having been promised wealth, education, everything one had confessed that one most desired?  Being young, high-spirited, and bitterly, bitterly disappointed, the chevalier bundled the six hundred marks back without a single word, and that was the last he ever heard of the Baron von Steinheid from that day to this.”