lovely Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, sister-in-law to the countess.  We are convinced we have proof of Providence intervening when some terrific event of the number at its disposal accomplishes the thing and no more than the thing desired.  Pitiful though it may seem for a miserly old lord to be blown up in his bed, it is necessarily a subject of congratulation if the life, or poor remnant of a life, sacrificed was an impediment to our righteous wishes.  But this is a theme for the Dame, who would full surely have committed another breach of the treaty, had there not been allusion to her sisterhood’s view of the government of human affairs.

On the day preceding the catastrophe, Chillon’s men returned to work.  He and Carinthia and Mr. Wythan lunched with Henrietta at Stoneridge.  Walking down to Lekkatts, they were astounded to see the figure of the spectral old lord on the plank to the powder store, clad in his long black cloak, erect.  He was crossing, he told them, to count his barrels; a dream had disturbed him.  Chillon fell to rapid talk upon various points of business, and dispersed Lord Levellier’s memory relating to his errand.  Leaning on Carinthia’s arm, he went back to the house, where he was put to bed in peace of mind.  His resuscitated physical vigour blocked all speculation for the young people assembled at Stoneridge that night.  They hardly spoke; they strangled thoughts forming as larvae of wishes.  Henrietta would be away to Lady Arpington’s next day, Mr. Wythan to Wales.  The two voyagers were sadder by sympathy than the two whom they were leaving to the clock’s round of desert sameness.  About ten at night Chillon and Mr. Wythan escorted Carinthia, for the night’s watch beside her uncle, down to Lekkatts.  It was midway that the knocks on air, as of a muffled mallet at a door and at farther doors of caverns, smote their ears and shook the ground.

After an instant of the silence following a shock, Carinthia touched her brother’s arm; and Chillon said: 

‘Not my powder!’

They ran till they had Lekkatts in sight.  A half moon showed the house; it stood.  Fifty paces below, a column of opal smoke had begun to wreathe and stretch a languid flag.  The ‘rouse’ promised to Lord Levellier by Daniel Charner’s humorous mates had hit beyond its aim.  Intended to give him a start—­or ‘One-er in return,’ it surpassed his angry shot at the body of them in effect.

Carinthia entered his room and saw that he was lying stretched restfully.  She whispered of this to Chillon, and began upon her watch, reading her Spanish phrasebook; and she could have wept, if she had been a woman for tears.  Her duty to stay in England with Chillon’s fair wife crossed the beckoning pages like a black smoke.  Her passion to go and share her brother’s dangers left the question of its righteousness at each fall of the big breath.

Her uncle’s grey head on his pillow was like a flintstone in chalk under her look by light of dawn; the chin had dropped.