The master of Roselands rang the bell.  “Good-night, Major Churchill.  I am sorry that we part no better friends, and I regret that you will not tell me what gatherer up of rumour and discoverer of mares’ nests was at the pains to procure me the honour of this visit.  I might hazard a guess—­but no matter.  Joab, Major Churchill’s horse.  Good-night, sir.”

He bowed formally.  Major Churchill stood for a moment looking straight before him with a somewhat glassy stare, then, “Good-night, Mr. Rand,” he said, in a voice like a wind through November reeds, made a bow as low and as studied as that with which he had once honoured Rand in the Fontenoy drawing-room, turned with martial precision, and stalked from the room.

Lewis Rand stood long upon the hearth, staring down into the fire.  He heard Major Edward’s horse go down the drive and out upon the highroad with a swiftness that spoke of a rider in a passion.  The sound of hoofs died away, and he still stood looking into the red hollows, but at last with a short and angry laugh he turned away and opened the door which led to the dining-room.  “Are you still there, Tom?  Come in, man!  The accusing angel has gone.”

Tom appeared, and the two went back to the great table in the centre of the room.  Rand unlocked the drawer and took out the papers in the perusal of which they had been interrupted.  Mocket snuffed the candles and tossed another log of hickory upon the fire.  “It falls in with what Gaudylock suspected,” said Rand’s measured voice behind him, “and it all dates back to the nineteenth of February.  When he left the house that night, he must have known—­”

“Of whom are you talking?” asked Tom at the fire.  “Major Edward?”

“No, not Major Edward.  And now he is using his knowledge.  She told me to-day that he was often at Fontenoy.  Too often, too often, Ludwell Cary!”

“Now, after stopping my mouth, you have spoken his name yourself!” remarked Tom.  “You and he are over against each other in that case to-morrow, aren’t you?”

“In every case we are over against each other,” said the other abruptly.  “And we shall be so until Judgment Day.  Come, man, come! we have all these to go through with before cockcrow.”

CHAPTER XXIII

A CHALLENGE

The Charlottesville Robbery Case was one of no great importance save to those directly concerned.  It had to do with a forged note, a robbery by night, and an absconding trusted clerk of a company of British Merchants.  When the case came up for trial on this October day, the Court House was well filled indeed, but rather on account of the lawyers engaged than because of the matter’s intrinsic interest.  The British Merchants had retained Mr. Ludwell Cary.  The side of the prisoner, mentioning that fact in a pitiful scrawl addressed to the law office of Messrs. Rand and Mocket, found to its somewhat pathetic surprise that Mr. Rand himself would take the case and oppose Mr. Cary.