“How are you, Mr. Ducaine?” he said.  “Awful hour to be out of bed, isn’t it? and all for the slaying of a few fat and innocent birds.  Let me see, wasn’t I at Magdalen with you?”

“I came up in your last year,” I reminded him.

“Ah, yes, I remember,” he drawled.  “Terrible close worker you were, too.  Are you breakfasting down stairs, sir?”

“I think that I had better,” the Duke said.  “I suppose you brought some men with you?”

“Half a dozen,” Lord Blenavon answered, “including his Royal Highness.”

The Duke thrust all his letters into his drawer, and locked them up with a little exclamation of relief.

“I will come down with you,” he said.  “Mr. Ducaine, you will join us.”

I would have excused myself, for indeed I was weary, and the thought of a bath and rest at home was more attractive.  But the Duke had a way of expressing his wishes in a manner which it was scarcely possible to mistake, and I gathered that he desired me to accept his invitation.  We all descended the stairs together.

CHAPTER XI

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

The long dining-room was almost filled with a troop of guests who had arrived on the previous day.  Most of the men were gathered round the huge sideboard, on which was a formidable array of silver-covered hot-water dishes.  Places were laid along the flower-decked table for thirty or forty.  I stood apart for a few moments whilst the Duke was greeting some of his guests.  Ray, who was sitting alone, motioned me to a place by him.

“Come and sit here, Ducaine,” he said; “that is,” he added, with a sudden sarcastic gleam in his dark eyes, “unless you still have what the novelists call an unconquerable antipathy to me.  I don’t want to rob you of your appetite.”

“I did not expect to see you down here again so soon, Colonel Ray,” I answered gravely.  “I congratulate you upon your nerves.”

Ray laughed softly to himself.

“You would have me go shuddering past the fatal spot, I suppose, with shaking knees and averted head, eh?  On the contrary, I have been down on the sands for more than an hour this morning, and have returned with an excellent appetite.”

I looked at him curiously.

“I saw you returning,” I said.  “Your boots looked as though you had been wading in the wet sand.  You were not there without a purpose.”

“I was not,” he admitted.  “I seldom do anything without a purpose.”

For a moment he abandoned the subject.  He proceeded calmly with his breakfast, and addressed a few remarks to a man across the table, a man with short cropped hair and beard, and a shooting dress of sombre black.

“You are quite right,” he said, turning towards me suddenly.  “I had a purpose in going there.  I thought that the gentleman whose untimely fate has enlisted your sympathies might have dropped something which would have been useful to me.”