‘There is something behind?’

’Much; but till you have heard Stony tell his part I shall say no more.  And for the present let this be our secret.’

‘Burton may come in at any moment.’

‘Good-night, then.’

’No; I’ll go with you.  I cannot face Mike in this condition.  He would think me mad.’

‘To Stony’s tent?’

’If you like.  In Heaven’s name, man, why are you so cold?  Why am I like a stunned brute?  We are brothers.  We may shake hands.’

Ryder made no advance.  ‘Better hear the story out,’ he said.

It was a two-mile walk from where Jim and Mike were now camped to Stony’s tent, and the hour was midnight.  The two men walked in silence, Jim with his head bowed, racked with nervous excitement, his mind running from point to point, grasping nothing wholly, seeing nothing clearly, the other erect and calm.  When the tent was reached Ryder entered unceremoniously, and, striking a match, looked about him for a candle.  There was a slush-lamp on a box by the bunk, and this he lit.  Jim saw Stony start up in bed, and stare at the intruder with a look of mortal terror.

‘I have brought you a visitor,’ said Ryder.

The apprehension faded from the hatter’s face when he Jim.

‘A nice hour!’ he grumbled.

‘I have not studied your convenience,’ answered Ryder.  ’Here is the man to whom you are to tell the story of Richard Done and Peter Cannon.  Tell it briefly, as you told it to me.’

Ryder seated himself on a block near the tent entrance, his back half turned to the others, and neither spoke nor moved throughout the narration.  Stony looked from one to the other, and then commenced his story.  He told it in a monotonous voice, with a dull face and eyes heavy with drink.

’We were always enemies, Dick Done and I—­enemies as boys at school at Chisley, fighting over everything, picking at each other from morn till night.  As young chaps we remained enemies.  It seemed as if God or the devil had sent us to plague each other.  Our enmity grew with us.  In manhood we were as bitter as death.  Then the woman came.  We both wanted her.  It was just natural of us to get set on the same girl.  She liked him—­she didn’t care a snap of her fingers for me; but I didn’t give up.  I followed her, plagued her, persecuted her, and hated Done worse than poison.  With all my soul I hated him!  Of course, we quarrelled over her, and Done went so far as to talk of killing.  He didn’t mean it, perhaps, but it told against him later.  One bright night I came on him and her sitting on Harry’s Crag.  ’Twasn’t an accident.  I’d been told they’d gone down to the sea, and I followed.  I interfered, furious at heart, but making a show of civility, knowing that would madden him.  He was soon up in arms.  He tried to drive me off, struck me.  I used my stick, and we fought there and then—­fought like madmen on the cliff edge, two hundred feet above the sea.  The girl, frightened almost to death, ran away.  Done got my stick from me, and we fought with our hands.  He could beat me at that game, and at length struck me a blow that stunned me; then he left me lying there, and went after the girl.’