THE HIDDEN HATE. By Howard Fitzalan. [pseud for George (Fitzalan) Bronson-Howard (1884-1922)] The body of a murdered man calls aloud for vengeance, yet culprit and executioner are closer than brothers. A NOVEL — COMPLETE IN THIS ISSUE.

 
CHAPTER I.
THE SWAMP TREASURE.

"IF," argued Hugh Coates, as he took notice from time to time of the dingy house with the dying Virginia creeper, "if he (or she) wants a man who places no value upon a human life, it might be better for an applicant to go armed and prove the truth of his statement by pumping lead into the reckless advertiser."

      Seen through the gloom of lower Washington Square, the house of the man who had need of a homicide presented few attractions.

      It was old, but the architecture was commonplace, its windows needed washing, and one of the newel-posts was broken, giving the place the aspect of a wicked wag with his head on one side.

      Hugh had been standing on the opposite side of the street for several minutes now, and his liking for the house was decreasing with every added second he stayed there.

      Now he observed that it was an object of indecision with another besides himself; and the fact that he shared with the place the scrutiny of the man of the silken scarf came near to sending him away with an unanswered advertisement in his pocket.

      He had left this one until the last because he was in no way particular about answering it at all; for it sounded very much as though it were the slogan of a Mafia society:

      He had taken out the slip of paper and was completing the hundredth reading, when a cough at his side gave Hugh to understand that the man with the silken scarf had decided that his personality was more interesting that the house.

      The scarf was of knitted gray silk, and the man wore it under his overcoat as most men wear stock-collars, pinning it half-way down with a cameo pin. Otherwise he was most unremarkable in attire and appearance, except that one would judge his eyes to be brighter than most.

      "Are you going to answer that advertisement?" he asked directly.

      "Are you anxious to get into trouble?" was Hugh's uncivil rejoinder. "If you are, a fine way to do it is to mix up in somebody else's business."

      "I'm not very diplomatic," sighed the other, turning away. "One man to do the work and one man to talk — they don't go together. Pardon me, friend."

      Hugh softened.

      "If it'll do you any good to know, I'll tell you, of course."

      "Well, to a certain extent, it seems imperative," replied the man with the scarf, twisting the cameo round. "Consuming curiosity is my curse. I want to know why that fellow advertised for a man who put no value on human life. Not an ordinary advertisement; you'll grant that. My theory is that he is crazy —"

      "He?" questioned Hugh.

      "His name is Selfridge; an old fellow whose wife just died. He's got a son at college, and a stepdaughter who's been acting as servant-girl. It's a rooming-house; he boarded there with Madam Ruiz when she ran it.

      "Used to be a fine old fellow then, they say; and the madam and her daughter, and he and his son all went over to the Fourteenth Street Theater every Saturday night and had supper in Lüchow's. Then he married her, and all of a sudden they change. They dismiss the servants, and madam and her daughter do all the cooking and house-cleaning, while the old man 'tends furnace after he gets home from his work in the custom-house — has a soft snap there at eighteen hundred dollars a year.

      "That's been nearly two years ago now. Stunning girl, even if she does make beds and wash the dishes and scrub, the floors. And then, I forgot about that, too — she takes French and Spanish lessons and goes to one of the best dancing-schools in New York."

      "And the son's at college?" questioned Hugh.

      "Second year. He's home now, I guess. The old lady — Madam Ruiz that was — she died three or four days ago, and he came home for the funeral. Now, the old guy puts in this ad about wanted a man who cares nothing for a human life. And it's, got me dotty trying to guess."

      "Why don't you ask him, then?" was Hugh's sensible query.

      The man with the scarf did not answer this question, but his eyes seemed to grow brighter as he planned an evasion. It came in the form of a statement that the old man was apt to recognize him, although it hardly seemed to Hugh that the gentleman was telling the truth.

      "How did you find out so much about these people?" Hugh further inquired.

      "It's a curse — my curiosity," bewailed the man with the scarf. "I'll go to no end of pains to gratify it. It'll cost me my life yet. But, say, be a good fellow and apply for the job. He'll probably give it to you —"

      He weighed Hugh up.

      "A nice, strong-looking fellow like you, with a fine, free air of not caring for anything — you look like you don't give a hang for human life. Tell him you don't, anyhow, just to find out what it's all about. I'll wait for you out here on the pavement. And, say, if the old man's gone nutty, here's a cannon you can tote along to make a grand-stand play with."

      Hugh felt the left pocket of his coat sag under the weight of the heavy bit of hardware that was dropped into it. If the man was pretending this curiosity to get him to go into the house, it was curious that he should arm him with a six-shooter.

      As his hand closed on the butt of it, Hugh made up his mind, and, nodding curtly to his new acquaintance, stepped across to 87 Orton Street and rang the bell.

      The haze was heavy and the lights glistened from Washington Square like phosphorescent jellyfish in a sea of moon mist. Orton Street was quiet under the shroud.

      The man on the other side of the street had become invisible, only a gray blur indicating that there was another side at all. If people were traversing the thoroughfare, they were gentlemen of predatory disposition in tennis-shoes, or else the fog was wrapped like cotton about their boot-soles.

      Under such circumstances, the mere opening of a door startled Hugh into gripping the weapon in his pocket.

      The hall was dark, for the flickering gas was almost hidden by the four sides of a semiopaque Flemish lantern that swung overhead.

      "Now, now," warned the voice of some one who stood behind the door, exposing but enough of his head to give sight of the one without, "you might as well not come in and worry us. We don't know anything about your mail — and we've closed your room. This is a private house — a private house — and it is also a house of grief. I should think you would have some shame."

      The tone had become high and querulous; and Hugh, accustomed to the haze, now made out a segment of rough, bristly hair and beard, between which an eye opened and shut rapidly.

      "I called in answer to an advertisement," said Hugh, emboldened by the age and complaining tones of the man. "It's true it appeared yesterday," he added extenuatingly, "and you've probably got the man you wanted by to-day. But I saw it only this morning."

      "Yes," shrilled the old fellow in a passion. "And I suppose you're going to ask me who I want you to kill. I dare say you'll tell me you've killed men before —"

      "To tell you the truth," replied Hugh frankly, "that's the very reason I've been hesitating for five or six minutes across the street. I was afraid that was just what you wanted, and I'm willing to adopt any profession but murder. Are you 'K. S.'?"

      He thought it better to make no show of the information gathered from the man across the street.

      The old man did not answer his question, but fumbled about in the dark hall, returning with a lighted match cupped between his palms and held in such a way that the escaping ray fell aslant Hugh's cheek-bones.

      "Come in," he said abruptly as the door slammed at Hugh's heels.

      Another door thrown open ahead revealed a room and a tiny fire, by which sat a girl, her head resting on her palms, the red glow upon her dusky hair, a silhouette of her head in shadow like that of a young Arcadian shepherd. Unmoved by the entrance of a stranger, she swung a foot and ankle, whose slimness was not disguised by the coarseness of stocking and shoe, with, the regularity of a pendulum, her eyes fastened upon the fire.

      Across the room an oil-lamp burned on a table that was scattered with coarse paper filled with figures and sketches, over which the old man threw a copy of an evening journal before he motioned his visitor to a chair.

      As for the girl, he paid as little attention to her as she had given to their entrance.

      "Draw up," he said, and Hugh saw across the lamp-lit table a man with bristly iron-gray hair cut close to his scalp, a beard — pure white — clipped, watery eyes, and a pair of ears phenomenally small. Certainly not one to fear. His attire denoted cleanly poverty — an old office-coat, frayed cuffs, a white string tie.

      "I worded that advertisement wrong," he commented as he gazed at Hugh. "You are the first man who applied that I could take. The rest were rascals. You — you're well-dressed, and you look honest. You haven't come here out of curiosity — to mock me?"

      "I came here with my pal, Phil Bemis, from Nevada, three weeks ago," answered Hugh. "We were a couple of the unlucky ones; sunk everything we had, and got nothing. We've run short of everything but clothes and linen — we bought a lot of that when we were flush in San Francisco.

      "We're mining engineers by profession, and did well up to this year. Then we thought we had a good thing round Goldfield — and we were the good things. Want any references?"

      "Yes," replied the old man. "My name's Selfridge. You can find out all about me from my bankers — Ellison & Head."

      Hugh gave him his visiting-card and several letters, over which old Selfridge studied, holding the letters up to the light as though to detect blotches or erasures. Silently he handed them back.

      "I suppose," he said, "you're curious about what I mean by that advertisement?"

      "Eh? — yes," rejoined Hugh, whose eyes had wandered to the silhouette of the little head made by the dancing firelight.

      Since his first glance at her, it had seemed unnecessary for the old man to go into any details about the work he wished done; it was already settled in the mind of Hugh Coates that it was he, and he alone, who could do what was required.

      "I mean," said old Selfridge sternly, "your own life — Do you value it?"

      The pendulum movement of foot and ankle became slower, then still, and Hugh was divided between dislike of untruth and fear of being adjudged a coward before the girl had even looked at him.

      "Why, I don't know, sir," he "replied "a trifle uneasily." I don't know that I've ever given the subject very much thought. I've got no great quarrel with life — but the devil's had me in his hand once or twice, and I don't believe I showed the white feather. I don't guess any healthy man is anxious to die — but I reckon I'm as courageous as the average."

      He was glad to note that the foot and ankle remained still; evidently he had acquitted himself well enough to be judged worthy of a listener's attention.

      He had not been paying very close attention to the old man, but it was plain that he had been accepted as one worthy of trust; for when his mind recalled the presence of Selfridge it was to discover that part of a narrative had escaped him.

      "One of the oldest families of the South, but fallen upon evil times, so my father came North just after the Civil War, and I never saw any of my relatives after that except Uncle Benjamin, who left me his library when he died — very old books that came from Selfridge Hall, in Powhatan County, Maryland."

      The girl turned and met the gaze of the young engineer, and again the drift of the old man's speech was lost in Hugh's contemplation of her pallid face, her tragic eyes, expressionless when she saw he observed her.

      What eyes! She seemed too little to have them, too slender, too young. Could this be the girl who made the beds and washed the dishes? It was like using one of Rodin's sculptures to grow spring onions in. Had it coarsened her hands?

      "Mr. Coates!"

      "Yes, sir, I heard what you said."

      And, putting his head between his hands, Hugh Coates leaned his elbows on the table and heard the old man drone on for close upon an hour.

      "I accept, sir," he said instantly, when a long silence seemed to indicate that the story was completed.

      "You understand," said Selfridge carefully, "that you are to be paid exactly one-twenty-fifth of whatever treasure is found, and nothing at all until it is found. Another one-twenty-fifth must go to another man whom I have yet to find.

      "The remainder goes to my son, Horace Selfridge, whom my stepdaughter. Donna is to marry as soon as he has completed his course at college. Meanwhile, she will go with us to Powhatan County and cook for us and keep camp — that is Donna, over there."

      He nodded toward the girl by the fire, who took no more interest in the statement than though it concerned some unknown person. Crossing to the mantel, old Selfridge took down a cabinet picture which he laid before Hugh.

      "And that is Horace!"

      If his tone had been casual in referring to the girl, it made up for it in the statement having to do with the original of the flabby young man in the flamboyant college clothes, as weak-eyed and squirrel-eared as his father, yet not without a certain sort of good looks.

      "You mentioned a friend," said Selfridge, as he replaced the photograph.

      "My pal," returned Hugh eagerly; "we've been together since our freshman year. It'll be hard, parting with him. I — I — wonder if you couldn't find a place for him. I — I'd hate to leave Phil."

      "I need another man; if he's willing to go on the same terms —"

      "Willing!" shouted Hugh, grasping the old man's hand. "Willing! You're on! The two of us report for duty to-morrow morning! Say, you've saved our lives!"

      So overjoyed was he that he with difficulty restrained his terpsichorean desires. He concluded the arrangements hastily, for he felt that nothing short of an air-ship would take him speedily enough to Phil Bemis.

      As he crossed the room, he paused and regarded the girl, but she still rocked.

      When he went out she was still rocking, and he did not see her eyes again.

---

CHAPTER II.
DAMON AND PYTHIAS.

      IT was still misty without, but the noise of the closing door was enough to attract the' attention of the watcher across the street, and he whistled softly. Hugh crossed over.

      "I'm afraid I can't be explicit," he said shortly, as he returned the revolver. "But I assure you that it isn't any case of murder. It's a question of a risky undertaking that the old gentleman's going to engage in, and he needs a man to help him. That's all. Really it is. The advertisement meant nothing but a disregard for one's own life."

      He heard the man breathe relievedly.

      "And now, if it's not too much trouble," added Hugh, as they moved toward Eighth Street, "would you mind gratifying my curiosity? Why did you want to know, and why didn't you ask yourself?"

      The man had dropped his somewhat careful tone when he answered:

      "I'm a special detective, that's all, my friend, and I went to answer the ad myself. I took a long chance and pretended to be a cutthroat, and he threw me out. I thought he'd recognized me for a 'bull.' I'm glad it's no Black Hand stuff. But we people have got to look out for that. I'm obliged to you."

      And, with a curt "good night," the detective cut off in the direction of Sixth Avenue, passing out of this narrative.

      Hugh boarded a car, and on reaching his destination — a dingy Twenty-Third Street hotel — found a scribbled note below the dressing-table light.

      Sallying out again in response to it, he joined Mr. Philip Bemis over corned-beef hash and poached eggs in a restaurant which was, at that hour, a private dining-room for the two.

      "You needn't look at me," said Phil, sopping up the last of the allotted portion of bread. "The ads were principally designed for those who love work for its own sweet sake.

      "One man offered me as high as seven-fifty for merely keeping his books, doing his typewriting, and running his errands. He said a girl would do it for six, but he wasn't mean — What? You've got something?"

      "Put that between us and it makes a sandwich," answered Hugh gleefully, as he laid down the clipping which implied sanguinary deeds.

      "What — that crazy one? You answered it?"

      "'And done well,'" replied Mr. Coates. "There's a job for both. Want to hear about it?"

      "Nope," replied Mr. Bemis. "I'm with you, Hughey — My dear!"

      He called the leisurely waitress.

      "We have got a job," he said. "You can duplicate that order, little lady. That goes for me and my friend. No, old pal, I haven't the slightest desire to hear the details. All I insist on is rubber gloves. I hate to get my hands all covered with gore. It's so sticky."

      "Oh, that's all a pipe-dream. The old man's a little dotty, I think. But he's willing to pay our expenses. And there's a girl —"

      "I love your lucidity," commented Phil.

      "He comes of a good Southern family —" began Hugh.

      "There are," interrupted Phil, "no families in the South that are not good; nor that did not once own slaves."

      "And his cousin still owns a place down in Powhatan County, Maryland, called Selfridge Hall. He also owns a few thousand acres of salt-marshes, swamps, and creeks bordering on the Atlantic Ocean.

      "Following the trail of one of these inlets to one of these swamps, you come to a small islet. On this is buried the treasure of a certain piratical privateersman, who departed this life in 1815. He was the great-great-uncle of the gentleman who employs us.

      "It appears that he returned from his piratical career in bad shape and applied to his brother to take him. His brother, thinking he was poor, did so grudgingly. To repay him for such a lack of fraternal feeling, the dying pirate ripped open the binding of a book and secreted therein the map showing where he had hidden his ill-gotten gains, together with a statement as to why he did it. He then neatly sewed up the binding again.

      "The volume in question remained in Selfridge Hall until after the Civil War, when our Mr. Selfridge's grandfather died, willing Selfridge Hall to his eldest son, who cordially hated his brother Benjamin and his brother William — our Mr. Selfridge's father.

      "So both of them had to go to work, and they came North, that their aristocratic relatives and friends might not behold their degradation. Uncle Benjy, it appears, froze on to some of the books, among them the one doctored by the dying pirate.

      "When he died, our Mr. Selfridge got it. A year or so ago he accidentally tore the binding — and since that time he's been trying to save enough money to go down there and get the treasure out of soak. With it he intends to buy Selfridge Hall, marry his turnip-faced son to a darling of a girl, and start one of the really-truly first families of America on its aristocratic way again."

      "Where do we come in?" asked Phil. "And why all this bunk about the value of a human life?"

      "Oh, he's superstitious. You see, the dying pirate to whom I have constantly referred in my narrative, a sort of a Red Ralph the Rover, evidently thought that to give such a treasure to some person unknown without having had any fun out of it himself was poor business. Since he had gone to all the trouble of stealing it, he made up his mind he'd frame up a little diversion for his life in another sphere.

      "So, in the narrative, he cautioned the finder of the treasure to avoid laying his hands on a certain ruby necklace which was cursed by the first man whose life he took and which had already been responsible for the death of seven men.

      "'I myself,' he writes, 'scorning the wisdom of the ancients, put my godless hand upon this necklace, and the same day received the wound which has been my death. He who touches it will surely die, so I caution you to go warily and avoid even the graze of this malignant jewel.'"

      "And so he's going to let us dig, is he?"

      "That's about it, I suppose. Does it feeze you?"

      "Not if I've got my rabbit's foot with me. When do we start?"

      "To-morrow or the next day. We're to help him choose a big touring-car and to motor down to Powhatan County, as it isn't important enough for a railroad to go within a hundred miles of it. We're to make camp at the mouth of Goose Inlet, while he locates the treasure, which is up-creek.

      "He'll have to work by night, because the treasure's on his uncle's property, and if the uncle catches him at it the treasure will be 'his'n.' Selfridge doesn't trust anybody a whole lot. We're to bring the treasure down-creek, a canoe-load at a time, and load it into the motor-car. When we get a motor-load, he'll take it and one of us up to the Philadelphia Mint, leaving the other to guard the treasure, and the girl as his personal representative to see we don't double-cross him.

      "He figures on three hundred and fifty thousand dollars without counting the cursed ruby necklace. I've got a hunch he'll let us have the necklace in addition to the two twenty-fifths. So if the map isn't the bunk, we've hitched onto a good thing."

      They clasped hands across the table.

      "What a good fellow you are, Hugh, getting me in on everything," said Phil, as they looked at each other.

      "Aren't we pals?" demanded Hugh in surprise.

      "You bet we are," returned the more demonstrative Phil. "And if our finances are low, they are not too low to drink to the best thing on earth — a friendship between two men. By Caesar, it's something that lasts, that is."

      Yet Hugh found himself thinking of the girl at the fireside, with the head of an Arcadian shepherd-boy and the eyes of tragedy.

---

CHAPTER III.
WHERE THE GRAY GEESE FLY.

      IT was a sunless afternoon, when nothing seemed alive, not even the sea. Under a sky like dull platinum lay the vast stretch of gray marshland and ocean.

      No wind stirred the gorse and the thistles; a single sailing-ship, far out from land, lay helplessly to port as though congealed within an iceberg. To the south, the serpentine flow of Goose Inlet became glass-like as it lost itself in the cypress swamp, a black blotch upon the gray, and an occasional thin streak of smoke ascending from the sheltered cove alone gave evidence of habitation, human or otherwise.

      To the two young men who came out of the little enclosed horseshoe of rock to stroll on the beach, the vastness, the loneliness, the silence, were only as old friends.

      They had seen many such places under the sky, and they liked them better than the limitations of the cities. For the sea has its own language for those who love her, the broad dome of the sky tells many secrets to him who understands, and the smell of the strong fresh air has its own tang which only its friends may know.

      These hardened, bronzed and roughly dressed young fellows were the friends of the elements and the lords of the silent places. It was given to them to know Nature as others know men and women, and they liked Nature better. She was kindlier, honester, giving warning of her moods.

      Marvelously ignorant, these two, of those creatures which civilization has made of the noble animal — man. Their friendship for one another had been all-sufficient, and they had found no necessity for other ties. So, strong in the belief that all other men were like themselves, they had the innocent, confiding faith of children in the goodness of the world.

      Now, stretched out in the gorse, with the salt air upon their faces, they filled their pipes from a single pouch, and stretched out in that glorious laziness which comes from a knowledge that no duty is suffering from neglect.

      "Wonder when we begin to earn our money?" asked Hugh, after his eyes had grown tired of watching the gyrations of a pair of wild geese flying swampward.

      "Wish he'd take us in there with him?" grumbled Phil, pointing toward the white bark of the birches that girdled the swampland, and where the arriving geese seemed to have stirred up some commotion; for now, out of the light fog that hung over the cypress-tops, a flock of gray-black forms rose like an erratic balloon in a vortex, honking, shrilling, excited.

      Phil found their appearance further cause for grumbling.

      "Think what we could do with a double-barreled shotgun and a dog," he said, his tone vexed.

      Hugh looked at him in some surprise. In the three days they had already spent at Goose Inlet, a certain antagonism had developed in Philip Bemis that Hugh had never before seen, even in the most trying experiences they had shared together.

      There did not seem much excuse for it, and Hugh was grieved at the lack of appreciation it showed; for were they not employed? — wasn't there a chance for making quite a considerable sum? Meanwhile, wasn't there the camp-fire, the warm blankets, the untainted air, the rolling sea — and Donna!

      A sudden suspicion, the first he had had, smote Hugh. Was Phil daring to do what he had denied himself? Selfridge had made it plain that Donna was to be his son's wife, and until he no longer owed Selfridge service, Hugh was determined to keep faith with him.

      It was difficult, too, with that silent, frail little girl moving about uncomplainingly, an unpaid servant, expected by her stepfather to perform the hardest tasks speedily; grumbled and sworn at when she was doing her best, and ignored when menial services were not required. In his heart, Hugh had grown to hate old Selfridge, his greed, his unholy pride, and his contempt for others; but he had addressed no words to Donna which held sympathy, preferring to show his feelings by taking off her hands all the harder labor of the camp.

      Until now, the fact that Phil was eager to forestall him in this he had laid down to the natural love which Phil had for him; but now he remembered that Phil had been actually ill-natured when Hugh had managed to wake before him this morning and finish the chopping of the wood before Donna was more than half awake, and, as a reward, had had her all to himself, swimming far out to sea with her, exulting in the chill of the morning.

      What a picture she had made, bending over the fire, wrapped to the chin in a heavy woolen robe, crimson of hue; her drying hair loose about her shoulders, her great eyes for the moment denuded of tragedy and smiling gratitude at Hugh! And such had been the picture when Phil awakened.

      He had been ill-natured ever since.

      "See here, Bemis," said Hugh suddenly, knocking the ashes from his pipe to the moss and grinding them out with his heel, "what's the matter with you these days?"

      The use of his surname acted upon Phil as a douche of cold water. Hugh had not so addressed him in years. After the shock of it, a sullenness resulted.

      "I dunno what you mean, Coates," he replied, emphasizing the unfamiliar form of address. "What do you mean?"

      There was an absence of honesty in the glances that were exchanged, and both felt it. Hugh was the stronger of the two, therefore the first to relent.

      "Oh, come, pal," he said kindly, "there's been a cloud between us lately — look there!"

      With the waning afternoon, the fog over the cypresses and white birches grew heavier. Now the sea-mist was rolling in great patches toward the trembling reeds and the quaking mud, and soon the white of the birches could no longer be seen.

      "We don't want it to get like that," remarked Hugh at length. "It's just a little cloud yet, old boy!"

      "I tell you I don't know what you're talking about," returned Phil stubbornly. "You're always getting ideas into your head like that. Why can't you leave me alone?"

      He looked away, snarling almost, for Hugh's glance was both hurt and reproachful, and his "Phil!" was charged with an emotion that the recipient resented, for he knew himself to be in the wrong. Vaguely, however, he felt that he had been ill-treated. Here he was, lying out here under the sky, smoking and doing nothing to anybody, and Hugh had to deliver him a lecture!

      "If it's about Donna, Phil —" said Hugh tentatively after a long pause.

      "If what's about Donna?" shouted the other, tearing his soft hat from his blond head and jumping up excitedly. "If what's about Donna? Good Lord, Hugh, cut it out! You make me tired! You'll be telling me I'm crazy about her next. Yes, and —"

      "And — aren't you?" interrogated Hugh hopefully.

      "No. I'm not," returned Phil with an oath, and started away. But there was something so forlorn about Hugh's position as he stood staring after, that the heart of his friend melted, and back he came, with his hat on again and both hands outstretched.

      "Don't let's quarrel, Hugh," he said, his tone slightly quavering. "After all, we've only got one another. But — Well, I've been out of sorts — something — a touch of liver maybe. Oh, the deuce! forgive me, old fellow."

      And again they filled pipes out of the same pouch and smoked in silence. But the question Hugh had asked about Donna remained still a question, and both men knew it.

      Phil would have liked to know whether Hugh cared for the girl. His standard of honor was not quite as high as his dark-haired friend's; he was gayer of nature and more easily depressed. The fact that Selfridge's son was Donna's affianced was of no moment to him.

      But Hugh's attitude — that was different. It had hurt him sorely to see Hugh looking forlorn. No matter how much he cared for a girl — "no matter how much," he repeated firmly to himself — he would not hurt Hugh.

      From which it will be seen that Master Phil was slightly prone to the dramatic: whereas Hugh had not one theatrical impulse. He saw no grandeur in any action which was a mere matter of fair dealing with a friend; no beauty in a sacrifice made for one he loved.

      He went to the theater seldom, because he was never in tune with the high lights of emotions. To him there was never a question of swerving from what he thought to be the right thing to do. He saw no need to get emotional over doing the right thing.

      But Phil would be sure to make an impressive spectacle out of a sacrifice!

      Yet, Phil was the more lovable of the two, where ninety-nine out of a hundred people were concerned. He was light-hearted, while Hugh was inclined to be contemplative; he would loan a dollar to the most casual acquaintance, and neglect to pay back his best friend. Phil's friends always suffered financially for their friendship; Hugh, most of all.

      Hugh would have denied his friend, his sweetheart, or his mother nothing — but the casual borrower would have gone away with empty pockets; for, where Hugh's emotions were not touched, he was colder than the heart of a hotelkeeper.

      And now, as he stared away at the long breakers that rose, fleece-like and foamy, on the teeth of the inlying rocks, a feeling of desolation overcame him. He was sure that the little dark girl with the hair like silk and the eyes of tragedy was necessary to his happiness. Yet, between him and her lay as many rocks as separated the breakers from the beach.

      So absorbed was he that he did not see her coming. As for Phil, he lay with his face to the moss, staring at the fog on the swamp.

      She came toward the silent ones, her hair heavy with the sea-mist, little salt-jewels upon her long lashes framing the eyes of tragedy; came along in her little rough shoes and coarse stockings, but with the grace of the wind itself in her swaying walk, and sat down, silent as ever, beside Hugh staring also at the sea.

      Phil's head had sunk down to the moss and he slept, the breeze riffling his blond hair. The girl put a rough little hand forward, like a tame animal not sure that it pleases its master, and the rough little hand played with the blond hair.

      It was an instinctive action, holding neither love nor affection in it, simply a desire to make a toy of a. living thing. But the scowl upon Hugh's face caused her to withdraw the hand quickly and look away.

      She was rather pleased that Hugh should scowl. She was only seventeen, and the knowledge that her actions could influence the thoughts of strong men thrilled her strangely. She wished suddenly that Phil would awake and see her caress Hugh's hair. Would he be angry, too?

      She did not make any excuse to Hugh — merely lifted a pathetic little face. The girl's charm was accentuated by her peculiar quality of silence. Down in her elf-like brain, she dreamed strange things — things big, wonderful, soul-stirring; and some strength of intuition told her that the words that came to her lips expressed none of these things.

      She was a witch, in her way, with a spell of atmosphere, a spell seldom broken by chatter. Her eyes spoke for her.

      To Hugh she always turned the face of one who needs protection. This very morning, out in the water, she had pretended once or twice to be out of breath, when in reality her sturdy little lungs were like those of a seal. But Hugh had liked to swim with one arm about her, and she had given him the chance.

      Hugh was bigger than Phil, and she liked that bigness. But then Phil told her funny stories, and made a capital stock of fun out of her stepfather, and also made her heart glad with imitations of the face in the cabinet-photograph which old Selfridge intended to be that of the father of the future Selfridges.

      She had confessed something to Phil this morning. It occurred to her to find out how Hugh would take it.

      "I don't want to marry Horace," she said suddenly and just as simply as the words stand written, except for a certain plaintive note that always accompanied the face she turned to Hugh.

      "I wouldn't tell anybody but you," she added hastily, with a glance at Phil, sleeping. "Don't say anything to him."

      It would be unjust to Donna to say that she did such things as this from any motive save that of a desire to please the person to whom she talked and to prop up her growing belief in her own importance. In these latter days, there had been no one in the house save old men and women, who took little notice of her save to disparage the ripe tints of her skin and the "boldness" of her eyes.

      Donna was a beauty of a warmer clime; the blood of Spain was in her veins; Spanish blood that had kept pure for three generations under the hot Central American sun. She was the daughter of an attaché of the Salvador consulate by his marriage to Margaret Hoskin, a patient, ox-eyed, self-denying woman who had once nursed Senor Ruiz during a serious illness.

      Donna's life during her father's time had been enlivened by gay, well-dressed gentlemen who often took her for walks on Fifth Avenue, and let her stop in Raquin's with them, and drink grenadine and other sirups, while they chatted over affairs under the tropic sky.

      Hernano Ruiz had been a "spender," like all his race, and with his death, Donna fell from the glory of rainbow-tinted waistcoated gentlemen until, after Madam Ruiz's marriage to Selfridge, she degenerated into a lodging-house "slavey."

      She was typically feudal in her impressions. Men had always had the right to place women where they wished — according to her mother. But a realization of her own beauty was growing stronger every day, and it gave her little warm thrills of pride to think that, such as she was, she was able to influence just such men as she remembered in her days of strolling on Fifth Avenue.

      She had often thought that it was very nice to own a gentleman with a brave waistcoat and an easy way of telling other people to bring him and his friends things to eat and drink, and not looking at the money that was given him in change.

      "Maybe," said Hugh with a brave effort, "maybe you're too young to know just exactly whom you do want to marry."

      "Oh, I know," she returned with a little, wise shake of the head and an upward glance that set wild thoughts at liberty in his well-ordered brain. "I know."

      She got remarkable effects with the few words she used, but she was a plagiarist. She had used exactly the same words and the same glance and the same gesture with Phil in the morning. Now she was disappointed in the effect.

      Phil had come closer to her and taken her hand, and besought her to tell him just who it was that she knew to be the desired director of her destinies. Hugh did no such things. He only seemed vaguely troubled. Also, he looked away from her.

      She sighed.

      "Oh, Donna," cried Hugh suddenly, and turned eyes on her that even a tyro like herself knew for yearning eyes.

      Primitive herself, she could not understand the motives that held him back. In reality, she was not quite sure what she wanted him to do, or how it would affect her, if he declared himself as the man she wanted.

      Phil was nice, too! What she chiefly wanted was sympathy in her affliction; the affliction of being turned over to a youth who was insufferably masterful without reason for being so. Even Donna's youth permitted her to understand that Selfridge's worship of young Horace was founded on a fallacy.

      It was most irksome to her to think that she should do rough housework in order that this unprepossessing hobbledehoy might live like a gentleman at college.

      Donna only knew one kind of gentleman — those of the rainbow-tinted waistcoats and the easy way of spending money, and to this class young Selfridge did not belong.

      "You see, Donna," Hugh finally brought himself to say, "any man who married you, and made you throw over Selfridge's son, would be working a hardship on you, unless you were several years older and knew that your love for him outweighed all other considerations. From what your stepfather tells me, the fortune that's buried round here amounts to something like three or four hundred thousand dollars.

      "Now, that will buy a beautiful house and provide you with servants and a maid to take care of your hair and manicure your fingers, and a motor-car to ride in, and a thousand and one more things that all pretty girls think are their due. You would have to love a man a great, deal to give up all those things willingly.

      "Don't you see, if you married anybody else, you'd be bound to poverty, practically, all your life. That is, if — well, in the case of an average man like Hugh Coates or Phil Bemis. That's what I mean."

      Donna opened her round eyes very wide.

      "But I should have the half of the treasure," she said slowly.

      Hugh smiled.

      "That's not the way I understand it, Donna," he returned. "You see, Mr. Selfridge is very proud of the position his family once held in these parts. His idea in digging up this treasure, as I understand it, is not so much for himself as for the sake of the family name. He wants to put it on the basis it was before the Civil War.

      "Up there" — and he waved his hand to indicate a space far beyond the swamp — "up there lies Selfridge Hall, that is now in ruins, or something very much like that. Mr. Selfridge intends to —"

      "I know that," said the girl impatiently; "but the treasure is to be divided between Horace and me. It was to have been divided between mama and Mr. Selfridge."

      Hugh shrugged his shoulders.

      "You evidently don't take your father's consuming passion very seriously," he returned; "but I'll tell you this. You'd better not let him hear you say you don't intend to marry Horace. Because, if you do, he'll probably send you out in the world to make your own living."

      In spite of the serious thoughts that this brought to the girl's mind, she could not overlook the chance for coquetting.

      "And what should I do, then?" she asked.

      "Why —"

      The words were at Hugh's lips, his arms were curved forward as though to take her slim body between them, when Phil woke and, raising himself on his elbow, saw the look and the gesture. There was a scowl on his face.

      The girl looked from one to the other, and then away, for delight had come into her eyes — the natural pride of the woman over whom two men are about to quarrel.

      But a long, snarling cry interrupted the situation, and Donna sprang to her feet.

      "He's awake," she cried. "I'll have to run and cook some supper."

      The two men followed slowly, neither speaking.

      Finally Phil, knocking the ashes from his pipe with a quick gesture, sprang ahead, and left his companion alone in the silence of monotonous sounds.

---

CHAPTER IV.
THE RED NECKLACE.

      THERE is no particular virtue in keeping one's body clean, if one inhabits a room with a bath attached. The truly cleanly man or woman must be sought for in places where the taking of a bath is accompanied by painful preparation. Old Selfridge could not be so classified. Since the arrival of the party at Goose Inlet, no water had touched his face, nor had he changed a single article of clothing; sleeping, eating, and digging for treasure in a suit of corduroys and a flannel shirt purchased in the first instance from a second-hand store on Sixth Avenue, and much in need of the cleaner's skill then.

      He had been sleeping all day, for, in spite of the fact that Goose Inlet was miles from any human being, he clung to the belief that his uncle of Selfridge Hall was on the alert for trespassers on his property.

      Therefore he quitted the camp after supper each night, and, getting into the canoe, paddled up the inlet and disappeared into the swamp, where, with a tape-measure, a compass, and a foot-rule, he went about the little islet up there, following the directions given on the map of the piratical privateersman. For three nights he had been so employed, returning in a surly mood at daybreak, waking up Donna, eating breakfast, and sleeping during the day. As the girl ran breathless at his call, he glared at her and called for food.

      The little cove with the shelving beach was ideally suited to the party, for the early October weather was mild, and the sea-breezes were warded off by the rock wall. Hugh and Phil had constructed a couple of "lean-tos," one for Donna and one for the men, and had spent some time cutting down young saplings and firs to protect the motor-car from rain. So that, with the evening shadows on the place, and the little fire crackling violet and orange, the place had. the atmosphere and smell of Christmas cheer.

      Hugh lounged in before Phil and lay on the sands near Selfridge, watching the girl as she busied herself with frying-pan and coffee-pot, the red glow on her dark face as he had first seen it that night on Orton Street.

      He turned occasionally as a harsh word from Selfridge recalled that person to his mind. Hugh stared at the dirty old man offensively.

      His white beard was stained; he had put on a mud-caked hat and taken it off, leaving some of the clay clinging to his bristly skull, and his little eyes were half hidden by their red rims. A sullen devil was fast growing to life in Hugh's mind, as he pictured young Selfridge developing into such a man.

      The girl understood, and threw him appealing glances.

      Deliberately Hugh turned to the old man.

      "As I understand it, sir," he said in a calm, smooth voice, "one-twenty-fifth of the treasure belongs to Mr. Bemis, and another twenty-fifth to me. After that the money is to be equally divided between your son and Miss Donna. Am I right?"

      "Divided?" growled Selfridge, looking up. "What's to be divided?"

      "The money from the treasure," replied Hugh suavely.

      Selfridge turned his back upon him.

      "There never was any question of division," he snarled.

      And then, as Phil's approaching footsteps caused him to turn and put a hand to the pocket that held a weapon:

      "Don't you be putting foolish notions into the girl's head. She's lucky enough as it is. She has no claim on this money. It's Selfridge money — my money. I'd look fine dividing it with somebody, now wouldn't I? It's money to buy Selfridge Hall with.

      "What's a little shrimp of a girl got to do with that? I'm giving her the chance to be the mother of my son's children — of the new Selfridge family. And all because she's Margaret's daughter. Not for her own sake, the sulky little brute."

      He glared at Donna, waving his hand. "Oh, you think you're ill-treated — ill-treated!"

      He fell to muttering, letting the sand trickle between his fingers. Donna went about her work as though she had not been the subject of conversation, saying nothing until she had fried the ham and the potatoes and taken the coffee off the crooked stick.

      Then she warmed the agateware cups and plates and spread four or five Japanese napkins on a flat rock so as to make a table-cloth.

      "Supper's ready," she announced.

      There was no word of conversation during the meal, except frequent requests from the old man for more food and drink. Hugh and Phil resolutely avoided the gaze of each other, Donna kept her eyes on the fire, the old man had his fixed on his plate.

      With his little eyes, his bristly head, and his thick neck, Hugh was continually reminded of a fatted porker bending over a trough. He had grown to hate Selfridge.

      Had he been given the faculty of looking impartially upon himself, it would have been flashed upon him that his attitude was ridiculous. Selfridge had taken him from poverty and given him the chance to make a small fortune; also, it was through Selfridge that he had met Donna. But Hugh was in love, and he saw only the little dark girl staring at the fire.

      She had cleared away the supper-things by now, washed them in the stream, and returned to the warm sands. The quiet was unbroken, save for the final flap of gull wings as the birds settled down in the nooks and crannies of the overhead rocks; and as for the sea, that great rolling murmur was only the soother of silence, except when an unruly little whitecap sent a snowlike streamer through the teeth of inlying rocks.

      Selfridge sat bolt upright, seeming to count the grains of sand that trickled through his fingers, and the night spread and spread until even the whitecaps of the waves were no longer distinguishable through the gloom of the sea-mist.

      Presently the old man rose, and, with no word, went to the edge of the creek and pushed the canoe into the water, a lighted lantern in his hand. They heard the splash, and, after the gurgle caused by the sharp nose of the canvas craft cutting the quiet water, the silence fell again, and the two men and the girl watched the rays of light fall on the black current on either side until finally it was no more than a pin-point of radiance that went out like the last glow of a burned match.

      "Are you superstitious, Donna?" asked Hugh suddenly.

      "You're thinking about the ruby necklace," was her unexpected reply. The girl was weirdly intuitive, such a person as mediums desire when they make "tests" for people worth while convincing. It was not, therefore, strange that she should have intercepted the thought-current, which ran more swiftly than the fire burned.

      Hazily it had occurred to Hugh that if Self ridge died, Donna would be willing to marry him, for then she would have the half share of the treasure and must needs deny herself none of the pretty things she must crave.

      To Phil it appeared that the ruby necklace might cause Selfridge's death before he had unearthed the remainder of the treasure, in which case all the money would be Donna's except a small annuity that they would allow the flabby-faced boy along with the necklace itself, which might do for him what it had done for his father.

      As for Hugh — he wondered if Hugh could be persuaded to touch the necklace. Hugh was unfair.

      No reason came to Phil's mind why he should harbor such a thought against his chum, and this angered him the more. Hugh was underhanded; that was it — he was underhanded.

      And so the two passions — greed for gold and love for woman, the only real passions found in the breast of every human — had changed two lovable boys into men who looked upon the death of a fellow creature lightly.

      The desire for wealth could, by itself, have worked no such transformation; but each knew in his heart that he could not hope to keep this woman by love alone. She must have love, and other things, too. And up there in the swamp was the gold that would buy the other things.

      The three eyed one another — Phil and Hugh in something like consternation; the girl in a satisfied, silent, smiling way.

      "What about the ruby necklace?" asked Phil hoarsely.

      It was one thing to jeer about old wives' tales when in the midst of the sordid commonplace — the stone-topped tables, the saucy waitresses, the thundering "L," and the whirring trolley-cars. But down on a lonely beach with a crackling fire and a quiet sea, the shadows dwindling and lessening on the sand, and the flap of wings overhead — there was a chance of seeing the pirate schooner, the dying woman, the curse, and the knife-thrust here.

      "I was wondering," said Hugh, as one in a daze hears himself talk — "I was wondering if that necklace wasn't, in some way, a sort of guard for the treasure. Whether — whether — it wasn't one of those things given back to earth with an invisible guardian.

      "Out in China there is a temple containing wealth beyond reason. It has four doors — silver, iron, copper, gold — and the tradition is that when a door was completed, a priest killed himself that his soul might pass into the watching dragon painted on the door."

      "What a fool you are!" cried Phil, shivering, nevertheless, as the shadows of the flapping birds above swelled into vampire size with the uproaring flames.

      The girl alone seemed unmoved. She was like a salamander, finding the fire all sufficient, sitting so close to it that the red tongues of it seemed to lick her face without searing it. The orange-and-violet flames had died away now, and the fire was red and burning before her like an altar-flame to a blood-stained goddess.

      Queer sounds seemed to come from rocks and water, swamp and marsh-land. Perhaps it was only the splash of a wild duck, the swish of the swaying reeds, or the groaning of a white birch before a gust of gale-driven sea-mist. As silently as ever, the girl prepared for rest and went within her lean-to, dropping the bark curtain before it.

      Phil, glancing about uneasily, took out his revolver, snapped it open, poured out the cartridges, and tested it. Hugh, for want of something better to do, removed its mate from the holster slung under his arm. The firelight licked them greedily, handsome weapons of blue steel, a monogram sprawled on the butt of each.

      When Phil, without a word of good night, went within the lean-to they shared with Selfridge, Hugh was still polishing the revolver with a handkerchief and seeing pictures in the fire — red pictures.

      Presently the weapon dropped from his fingers to the warm sand and he let it lay, hardly knowing it was there. The girl, wondering at the silence, saw him as she peeped out, sitting bolt upright and staring, staring, yet seeing nothing.

      Somehow, it seemed that the night was too quiet.

 

      A faint tremble assailed the darkness. A feather of gray spread itself upon the cap of night.

      A great castle with turrets of pearl thrust itself above the mountain of mist, and in the fresh dawn the geese dived into the marsh-pools and gemmed the moss with the splashing drops.

      Phil awoke and, as had been his custom for years, reached out a hand to awaken Hugh. But Hugh was not there.

      He struck a match and lit a candle. Hugh's bed of pine-boughs lay untouched, the blankets spread above it. Phil put out his head and looked at the new-born day with its pearls of salt spray on the bushes and the pink radiance above the swamp. The fire burned on the beach a pale amber, almost unobscured and unnoticeable in the stronger light of dawn.

      And close to its embers Hugh slept.

      The fact smote Phil with a sense of injustice. He came out of the lean-to, and stood watching the sleeping man's face. Hugh was not enwrapped in peaceful slumber; a scowl on his features, taken in conjunction with a smear of charred wood just above his right cheek-bone, gave his face a sinister appearance. The scowl was duplicated on Phil's face as he turned away.

      It occurred to him now that Selfridge had not returned from his nocturnal search. The canoe was not on the shelving beach; his bed of pine-boughs also was untouched. Undoubtedly, he had found the treasure, then, and could not bear to leave it.

      Phil set about chopping wood for a fresh fire, opening cans of condensed food, and preparing the coffee. Still Hugh and Donna slept. He stripped off his clothes and got into his bathing-trunks and jersey, plunging into the surf and swimming far out beyond the breakers. The battle with the waves set him all atingle, and when he returned he found that Donna was moving about the fire and Hugh was talking earnestly with her.

      Changing his wet clothes, he joined the breakfast circle, which was as moody as that of the last supper, and, with it over, observed curtly that it seemed to him that the absence of old Selfridge wanted looking into.

      "Oh, let him alone," said Hugh carelessly, as he went into the lean-to to change into his bathing-suit. "He knows where the camp is, and it's up to him to find it."

      "You go," was Donna's remark. "I'm too busy with these things. I'd put on my wading-boots, though. He says there isn't any path into the swamp."

      Phil buckled on the high boots, felt for his revolver, and went off, while Hugh advanced gingerly toward the sea. Donna was singing a little Spanish song.

      No one seemed worried about the old man but Phil. And why he should be worried he did not know.

      But all during the night the ruby necklace had possessed him, filled his dreams, brought him half a dozen times to the scream of waking. A premonition, heavy, lead-colored, depressing, hung over him. The swamp was suddenly a thing of evil and mystery.

      Donna had been right about the path. As he drew away from the camp, the moss began to disappear and the soil squirted up in little jets under his feet. A little ahead he saw tiny water-holes. He advanced to the creek-bed, where the water came up to his hips, and waded on past the curve and out of sight of the camp.

      Here the inlet became very narrow and much deeper. The water rose over his hips and soaked him above the waist. He was about to draw back when he saw, caught among the roots of a great weeping-willow tree, the canoe. He advanced.

      The water got no deeper, but the bed sank beneath him. He managed to reach for one of the roots and drew himself forward, his chin coming just over the gunwale of the canvas boat.

      He started, screamed like a woman, and caught the gunwale, capsizing the canoe.

      He seemed to have lost the power of movement as he sank below the surface of the water, blinded, helpless. He came to the surface, striking out, but not to save his life, only to push away from him something that was horrible, something that threatened him with an unclean terror.

      Again he sank.

      In his terror he had forgotten that the water was not above his head, and the fear of death threw out the mental dread. He struck out furiously now, his lungs stifled as he fought for existence in four feet of water, till the kindly current caught him and swept him to shore, just below the bend of the creek and upon firm soil again, where he lay unconscious.

      And that same current bore another body ahead of him — the body of an old man.

      But him it did not leave unconscious, nor so far from the camp. Indeed, it washed it to the feet of Donna, who was bending over the breakfast dishes.

      And she stood back, looking at it, when Hugh came from the sea, dashing the spray from his eyes.

      He followed the girl's gaze.

      There was a red spot on old Selfridge's head and a red necklace clasped in his stiffened fingers.

---

CHAPTER V.
THE MURDERER'S WEAPON.

      TO look upon the body of a man foully murdered is to see oneself struck down by a treacherous hand.

      The man who speaks callously of murder has never witnessed one. The call for vengeance the sight evokes is not love for the dead man, but the instinct of animal self-preservation. If Selfridge had been murdered, then so would he, Hugh Coates, be murdered.

      "The treasure," said Hugh suddenly.

      The girl shook her head, pointing to the necklace.

      "You see," she said simply, "there was something in it, after all."

      Hugh shook his head and pointed in turn to the red spot on the old man's right temple.

      "Ghosts don't use revolvers," he said. "The man who did this knew the story. He killed him for the treasure. He hasn't had time to remove it yet. He's in that swamp now, and I'm going to find him."

      He started toward the canoe, but changed his mind.

      "He can spot me in that. It takes a good man to hit another one who is swimming."

      And, with palms together, he shot into the water and swam up Goose Inlet. He had not far to go before the body of Phil on the sands brought him back to shore, and he bent over his chum.

      Reassured by the beat of his heart, and afraid to linger longer lest his quarry escape, Hugh swam on up the creek until he was breasting the swift current that came out of the black swamp, brushing his cheeks against the rushes.

      The air was that of stormy twilight, and very chill.

      Smooth green trunks, old with the moisture of ages, rose pillar-like about the stream, girdled by thickets of canes and tall reeds; great boughs stretched out to protect the inky mirror from the sun, boughs from which long tendrils hung, swaying in the cold breath of the swamp.

      Dim white flowers starred the darkness, clinging to boughs and trunks, and the creeping vines seemed like ghostly hands reached out to prevent the hardy swimmer from penetrating the secret they had shielded so long.

      The stillness was such that Hugh seemed to hear the very breath of silence.

      He had been swimming for some time before he saw a light burning ahead of him — a single, lonely light, that flowered the blackness round about with yellow blooms.

      Softly he swam, circling the islet, keeping outside the zone of the lantern's rays. But he heard no voice, no sound.

      Emboldened, he came to land, and his naked feet sank into the soft, marshy earth. Still the silence was unbroken.

      Hugh stood stock-still, almost afraid to draw his breath. What if, after all, the ruby necklace was — But, no! — that was all very well before the man died. But now!

      Still, it was not hard to believe, under that cathedral dome of darkness, standing beside that inky mirror that ran so swiftly, yet seemed as still as the grave. Even the birds and wild fowl that dwelt within the swamp shadows by night would have none of its unnatural dark by day. It was a thing accursed, set apart — the house of the dead.

      He came forward, step by step, until he had picked up the lantern. And now a faint halloo from afar turned him sick with fear. Looking quickly about in the lantern's rays, he seemed to see a newly dug grave. The lantern dropped from his fingers. He fell to his knees.

      But as he fell, he saw the light shine upon golden coin, and knew that what he had taken for a grave was the discovered hiding-place of the treasure that had once belonged to a Selfridge.

      He reached over, picked up the lantern again, and thrust his free hand deep into the hole, letting it play about to the tune of chinking gold.

      Now the halloo came again, long, repeated. It was the voice of Phil.

      "Hal-loo!" called back Hugh. "Halloo — halloo!"

      "All right?" sung out the voice again.

      "All right."

      He heard the plashing of the canoe-paddle, and stepped to the shore of the islet, the lantern in his hand. And like a gray ghost the light boat shot out of the blackness.

      "No one here?" asked Phil as he dragged Donna over the marsh.

      "No one," answered Hugh. "The lantern was still burning. The treasure's dug up."

      He led them to the place he had taken for a grave, and where the lantern-light now fell upon rows of rotten canvas bags, belching forth their precious contents into the great oaken chest in which they lay.

      "The necklace must have been on top," said Donna, catching a hand of each.

      "Bah!" said Phil Bemis. His tone was strangely harsh. "What we want to look for is the imprint of boot-heels. There were two men on this island last night. One of them killed the other. He'll have left his mark."

      He took the lantern from Hugh's hand, and with it circled the tiny islet. Donna drew closer to Hugh.

      "You're cold," she said. "Get into the canoe and go back to the camp and change into some warm things."

      "The body?" interrogated Hugh, turning to Donna.

      "It floated out to sea," she replied, shuddering a little. "A wave caught it. And I was afraid to touch the necklace. Did I do wrong in letting it go? It and that terrible necklace? I — I was afraid!"

      Hugh put his arm about her.

      "Poor little thing!" he said, and stood so when Phil flashed the light again upon them.

      "Find anything, Phil?"

      Bemis scowled and shook his head.

      "Did you know," he asked slowly, "that I found the body?"

      "You found it?" interrogated Hugh in surprise. "You found it? Why, Donna and I —"

      "I know," replied Phil. "I was wading up the creek. I — it scared me. I overturned the canoe. That's the worst of it. There might have been some evidence in it, and now it's in the bottom of the creek."

      He paused and set down the lantern on the ground.

      "Go back to the camp and change your clothes," said Donna imperatively, catching Hugh's hand. "And bring back your revolver with you. Mr. Bemis's cartridges are wet. His" (it was evident that she spoke of Selfridge) "we can't find at all. Hurry now!"

      "Yes," said Phil; "and meanwhile we'll have some of this stuff piled up for you to take back. I want to get away from this place. Oh, no! — not the island — the whole infernal business. I — oh, go ahead, will you?"

      He unloosened Donna's hand from Hugh's and pushed him toward the canoe. Hugh picked up the paddle, noting that it was an extra one that they had kept in camp, and pushed off. Phil knelt down and lifted one of the money-bags — the gold pieces poured out of it.

      "Say," he yelled after Hugh, "bring all those sacks of burlap, will you? These bags are no good."

      "All right," sang out Hugh from down the creek.

      Donna settled herself within the circle of light, head between her palms, staring at Phil as he lifted sack after sack, only to have it burst in his hands. An incautious movement of hers overturned the lantern for a moment, and he rushed to its rescue before the flame went out.

      "Oh, Phil, I'm awfully sorry!" she said.

      It was the first time she had called him Phil. A great wave of tenderness overcame him at the thought of this little girl so utterly alone and unprotected in the world; and he would have caught her in his arms had not a certain instinctive feeling told him that she was as much in need of protection from Trim as from any one else.

      And here, on the islet alone with her, he was her guardian.

      So with no word he went back to his unprofitable task of lifting the rotten bags. Another burst; and as he reached for yet another, his hand closed on something larger than a gold piece, and he drew it out — a revolver of blue steel, its butt monogrammed.

      He stared at it as one would an asp upon the breast of a loved one. For the moment he believed himself the victim of an hallucination. With dry lips and parched tongue, he stared, his mouth open, his eyes dilated.

      It couldn't be true!

      He turned his head as mechanically as though he were an automaton. Donna was sunk in deep meditation, seeing nothing.

      With a quick movement, he threw the revolver open. One cartridge had been used.

      The revolver dropped into the pocket of his wet coat. He, too, caught his head between his palms.

      And so the two sat in the light of the lantern, under the cathedral dome of gloom, in the twilight of the silent swamp. Before them lay wealth so great that their minds were incapable of grasping its significance — louis and doubloons, sovereigns and eagles, reals and Napoleons — below them other chests with great ingots of gold and silver; hidden between them, bags containing precious stones.

      Yet neither seemed to heed; both were as silent as the swamp itself, the spell of devil's magic upon them. And so Hugh found them when he sprang ashore again in his corduroys and boots.

      He threw some sacking at Phil's feet.

      "Well, come on, old fellow," he said. "We'd better be getting some of this stuff down to the camp. You and I'll have to make a lot of trips, though. That canoe won't hold a lot besides one person."

      "You didn't find your revolver, did you?" asked Phil, turning slowly.

      "No. I'm blessed if I know what happened to it. I had it in my hand when I went to sleep last night."

      "I should think," said Phil still very slowly, "that the loss of it would worry you a good deal, with a murderer about who's liable to put a bullet into any one or all of us at any minute."

      "It does worry me," replied Hugh; "I wanted especially to tell you to dry out your gun. I brought some fresh cartridges for you."

      He exhibited a handful to Phil.

      "You're sort of careless of your own weapons, aren't you?" Phil returned.

      He took the revolver he had found from his coat-pocket and handed it silently to Hugh.

      "I took yours by mistake," he said. "There it is."

      "Oh, thanks!" said Hugh.

      Phil was in the light, Hugh in semidarkness. The latter leaned forward and looked at his weapon.

      "It's damp," he said.

      "I've had it in my pocket."

      Hugh snapped it open just as Phil had done, and the cartridges fell into his hand.

      "Why," he said suddenly, "why — why, one's missing."

      "Yes," replied Phil. "One's missing."

      Their eyes met. Phil was glaring at him. For a moment Hugh gaped open-mouthed. Then suddenly hate came into his eyes, too.

      The girl seemed to awake.

      "I'm cold," she said. "I'm cold. Won't you take me back to the camp?"

---

CHAPTER VI.
THE TEST.

      THE canoe sagged under its freight when the second sack was added, and Phil motioned Donna to enter, following her and paddling off. Hugh was again alone on the island.

      His friend! His pal! His chum! A murderer and a coward! Phil had discovered the body, Phil had stolen his revolver so that it might be proven that he, Hugh Coates, had committed the crime, unless Hugh was willing to keep his secret. And so he thought to marry Donna and thus gain the treasure?

      He was willing to do murder for the stuff — willing to sacrifice that little girl to gain the right to call the gold his own.

      Hugh jerked the revolver out of his pocket.

      Yes, it was his own — his very own. They had bought them at the same time in a little gunshop on Kearney Street in the days when they went down to San Francisco, flushed with temporary success. There was the monogram sprawled over the butt.

      Donna had seen Phil hand it back to him. If he, Hugh, accused Phil of the murder, Phil might say he had found the revolver anywhere he chose. He claimed to have first seen the body of the murdered man; it would be easy to say that this revolver lay near the body.

      And he could pretend that only solicitude for his friend prevented him from accusing him of the crime.

      He could ruin him with the one person in all the world that his heart desired — Donna! He could make Donna believe that he, Hugh, was a murderer unless Hugh gave tacit consent to his carrying out his trick — unless Hugh kept silent and made no attempt to win her.

      How careful Phil had been to give him back that revolver while Donna listened! How deliberately he had stated that it was he who first saw the body! How devilishly he had insinuated that a cartridge had been used!

      And he, Hugh — what alibi had he? He had been seen late the night before with the revolver in his hand. In the morning he had forgotten all about it, did not know what had happened to it until Phil had handed it back.

      He saw the hopeless sophistry of the explanation. No, Phil had contrived it well — had contrived it so well that if Hugh accused him, he would not only be able to pretend innocence, but also would get a great deal of credit for attempting to shield his friend. It would make a hero of him in Donna's eyes — that miserable rat of a Phil!

      Murderer, thief, betrayer! Must he stand aside and see him win the thing he prized above all others?

      The minutes dragged like days. Feverishly, Hugh set to work to fill the other sacks that lay by the open hole, and soon the canoe was back bearing only Phil. Hugh loaded in four of the sacks, and bade Phil continue the work while he took his turn at the paddle. And out of the swamp he went, and back to the camp where Donna was oiling the machinery of the motor-car.

      "Oh, isn't that enough? Can't you go back and get Mr. Bemis and let us all get away from here?"

      The girl's tone was appealing. Hugh looked dazedly at the motor-car, then at her. A sudden suspicion smote him.

      "Did Phil tell you to go to work on that?" he asked abruptly. "Did he suggest it?"

      "Why, yes," she replied, opening her eyes in wonder; "he said to have it all ready so that, when we had all the treasure in it we can crowd in, we can get away from here. Don't you want to go, too, Hugh?"

      He nodded.

      "Yes, yes, yes," he kept repeating. "Yes, yes, yes."

      Overhead a sea-gull screamed a requiem to the lonely body that floated on the waste of waters — or, at least, the bird's melancholy cry so came to Hugh's ears.

      So treachery was to be piled on treachery? On Phil's last trip down he would carry off the girl, the car, the treasure, and leave his erstwhile friend on the little islet where the other man had met his death.

      "I'll see," said Hugh. "And he'll see."

      The girl noted him muttering, but said nothing. As she turned away, he crossed to the motor and removed the ignition-plug.

      "They can't start without that," he thought as he put it in his pocket. "And I'll have the satisfaction of knowing just how much of a rat he can be."

      He stepped back into the canoe, though every impulse within him called out to warn the girl and to beg her for himself. Maybe she expected it, too, for her eyes were wistful as she watched the canoe round the bend and pass out of sight again.

      She seemed very small to be lifting those heavy sacks into the vehicle that was to take them back to civilization. But she did it with apparent ease. Not for worlds would she have exposed that strength of muscle to her companions.

      Nor was she frightened; though murder had been done near by, she, in the open, with all that treasure to guard and every reason to believe the killer of Selfridge lurked in the vicinity, did not even turn her head in case the criminal should be approaching.

      Something of this attitude came to Hugh's mind as he paddled back to the islet. Poor little girl — her simple primitive faith was touching! She really believed in the legend of the red necklace — had such faith in the power of the curse that no thought of a mortal hand occurred to her. He doubted if she would believe that he had committed the murder, even if Phil accused him. She was so young — so innocent!

      As the dark shadows of the swamp encompassed him again, the devil of hatred, begotten by love, possessed Hugh. He had begun to see good in evil, justifying his revengeful thoughts by excuses which concerned her welfare.

      Was it right that he should even give Phil the chance to convince her? Phil was good-looking, and other women had cared greatly for him. Donna was young; knew little of men. It was exceedingly probable that she loved Phil, and only waited for him to declare himself.

      In that case, she would believe implicitly all he said, and nothing that Hugh could do would convince her of her error.

      He remembered the revolver in his pocket. Phil's was wet. They would be alone in the swamp. Wasn't there an old biblical saying to justify him — "An eye for an eye"? The law took such offenders as Phil and hung them. Down here there was no law, except that which men made for themselves. Was it right for him to let Phil go on his evil way?

      But when the canoe grounded on. the islet and he saw Phil bending over the chest of gold, the revolver slipped back into his pocket. No matter what justification, he couldn't shoot his old pal. A thousand little incidents rushed back to him — incidents of self-sacrifice and kindliness on the other's part.

      There was that time in Death Valley when the water gave out and Phil pretended to have a full flask when Hugh offered to share his last drink. And Phil's flask had been as empty as a gourd.

      He had tried to hide it, too, as the hours passed, and perhaps Hugh would never have known had he not taken Phil at his word and believed the other to have water which he was trying to keep for himself. What a cur he had felt when Phil turned his flask upside down, and Hugh knew then that his chum had been three hours longer without water than himself.

      The picture was as vivid as any thrown upon a dark curtain; and had Phil's attitude been in the least contrite when Hugh joined him, the memory of that incident might have impelled Hugh to stretch out his hand and take his chum's, promising to stand by him to the death, if he would be honest with him.

      For it was not the killing of Selfridge that stood out black in Hugh's mind. It was the double-dealing. Had Phil committed a murder and rushed to Hugh for protection, Hugh would have seen only the boy he. knew, not a murderer; and, even to the extent of incriminating himself, would have given the supplicant sanctuary.

      But Phil's eyes were as somber as before, and his voice was harsh when he addressed Hugh.

      "I've got all the gold out of the first chest. There's another one under it. Bear a hand, will you?"

      Together they lifted forth the great oaken box. An idea came to Hugh.

      "That'll float," he said. "We can put half a dozen of the bags in it and tow it down-stream. Try it."

      The chest rested lightly on the water. They placed four burlap bags in positions that would give it equilibrium. It sank an inch below the water, and they added other bags until the entire treasure remaining was stowed away. Still the chest had a full two feet above the water-line and held a steady position. Hugh passed a light rope through one of the brass handles, tying a sailor's knot exactly in the center of the handle and hardening the knot by the application of water.

      He would try Phil, would discover if it was possible for him to be the traitor he had imagined when he removed the ignition-plug of the motor-car. It would cost him only a swim to find out. Phil couldn't get the car away without that plug.

      "You tow the thing down," he said, placing the lantern on top of the sacks of coin. "There's not room for two in the boat with that freight. But you've got to be careful of the current. The momentum of the chest'll be greater than that of the canoe. Maybe it would be better to ballast it a bit."

      They removed several of the sacks to the canoe, and Phil climbed in without a word. There was about forty feet of thin rope in the canoe, one end of which was attached to the chest, the other in Phil's hand. He knotted his end to an iron ring set in the stern.

      "Now," said Hugh, pulling the chest close to shore, "you paddle ahead, and I'll hold the chest until the line comes taut. When it does, I'll let go, and you paddle as hard as you can to keep ahead. You've only got about an eighth of a mile of swamp; and, once the chest gets into the open, you can let her float any way she wants to. The channel's pretty shallow; even if it sank, we wouldn't have much trouble. Ready?"

      "Yes."

      Hugh heard the dip of the paddle and felt the rope slipping through his left hand. The current strained at the chest; and it was with some difficulty that his other hand, clasped in the brass handle, held the bulky oaken frame back.

      But soon, in the light of the lantern, he saw the line lift itself out of the water until it ran parallel to the surface. He released his hold, and the light atop its precious load floated away, its speed increasing as it reached the center of the current, until it was not long before it had raced from sight.

      Now, they had all the gold the motor-car would contain. Phil knew that for Hugh to leave the islet, he must strip himself of his clothes and swim. It would not be difficult for him to remove Hugh's change of apparel from the camp. It was twenty miles to the nearest railway station, so they would have the start of four or five hours.

      It couldn't be planned better.

      Hugh walked back and sat beside the hole in the ground. It was no longer possible to distinguish anything, but it seemed less lonesome there.

      So, alone in absolute darkness, he waited. He was on the safe side, the ignition-plug in his pocket. He had nothing to fear but a cold swim through the swamp, with the disagreeable possibility of meeting some reptile in the water. But he was as filled with tearing uncertainty as though he risked all.

      Would Phil do it?

      And would Donna permit him?

      He had a long time to think it over. The canoe might have' returned and made the trip again and again, a score of times. Still he waited. He was safe, and he wanted to have the full measure of his friend's perfidy.

---

CHAPTER VII.
ONLY ONE MAN LEAVES THIS PLACE.

      A STRANGELY warm gust of wind tossed some multicolored leaves into Donna's face as she bent over to assist Phil with the last sack of gold coins. She turned a troubled gaze to him.

      "It looks like stormy weather," she said. "Hadn't you better go back and get Mr. Coates. He must be terribly lonely up there, without even a light. Please go. I've asked you a dozen times."

      A curious mental telegraph exists between two people who have shared the same bed and board for many years. Hugh had suspected Phil of desiring to do a certain thing — the very thing, in fact, which was then formulating in Phil's mind.

      When he had brought down Donna with the first load of the treasure, he had told her to take the boughs down that sheltered the motor-car, so that the treasure might be stowed away. The sight of the crimson vehicle had, however, started a new train of thought in his mind.

      Since he had found the revolver, no doubt existed in Phil's mind that Hugh was guilty of the crime. And he reasoned just as his friend had done — that Donna was a secondary consideration to the treasure where Hugh was concerned. Vengeance upon a friend was out of the question. He, Philip Bemis, would never be a witness against him. But to assist him in his conspiracy to marry the girl was not to be thought of.

      Nor did he ever wish to look upon Hugh's face again.

      Under normal circumstances, neither would have believed the other guilty of the crime; and, no matter how strong the evidence, each would have gone frankly to the other, demanded his word as to his guilt or innocence, and stood by him in either case.

      But the girl was there, and the inevitable triangle separated them from one another as it brought each near to the apex — herself.

      Phil was honorable enough. He knew that to tell the girl of his love while she was alone with him, to explain Hugh's guilt, and ask her to come under his own protection, would be like offering a home to a friendless child. So, now that Hugh was safely on the island, he racked his brain for some excuse by which both he and Donna could take the motor-car away, yet speak no word against Hugh.

      The reason he evolved was a flimsy one, and he knew it. But it was the best he could think of, and it would have to do.

      He lifted his somber eyes to Donna, but averted them as he spoke the lie.

      "Hugh isn't on the islet," he said. "We've got a clue as to who committed the crime. He's following it out. He told me he wanted us to get away from here as quick as we could. To take the motor-car and get away. He'll meet us in Philadelphia."

      He rose to his feet and held out his hand.

      "Get your things into the car — those you really need, of course. Leave the rest here. You won't need any of them now you're rich!"

      "You mean, go away and leave Hugh — Mr. Coates?"

      "Why, of course," Phil replied impatiently. "He wants us to. He's afraid the man who killed Mr. Selfridge will be down on the camp any minute with a pack of ruffians, and he doesn't want you to take chances."

      "Oh, I'm not afraid," she said slowly, adding: "Not with you here, that is."

      He turned eyes upon her that flamed the words he would not say. She met their gaze steadily, and patted his hands.

      "I'm not afraid. You'll protect me, won't you?"

      But the onlooker would have said, comparing the notes in the voices of each, that it was the boy with the blond hair that needed protection far more than this self-possessed little maiden with the wind-blown locks and the eyes that forever went back to the look of tragedy.

      "Yes, of course I'll protect you," he rejoined, covering her rough little hands with his. "You know I'll protect you."

      "Then we'll stay until Hugh finds out. I'm not in any hurry to go. I'm happy here — quite happy. And besides, it looks like a storm is coming up. I'd rather be in this quiet little cove than in a car where the lightning is liable to strike one. Let's cover it up again; shall we, Phil? And then try to find Hugh and bring him back here."

      "No," said Phil stubbornly. "No. Hugh and I have made our arrangements. He's not coming back here. He'll meet us in Philadelphia, I tell you. I've given him an address where he can find us. What's the use of waiting? Come on, won't you, Donna?"

      She shook her head.

      "Not now," she said. "Wait until this storm blows over. I'm sorry Hugh's going to be out in it. Don't you think you could find him, if you tried? Don't you remember what direction he took? I think it was very unkind of him to go without saying good-by to me."

      "It wasn't a clue that would wait," returned Phil sullenly. "It had to be followed up then and there. It was important and — er — had to be followed. You understand?"

      "No, I don't," was Donna's practical reply, "because you haven't told me what the clue was. I'm interested. He was my stepfather. Tell, me!"

      Phil turned away, his mouth forming aimless and profane words. He lacked experience in lying — did not know just how to begin when he had no mendacity ready to his tongue. The girl followed his movements with the eyes of perception.

      "I don't just exactly know what is the matter with you, Mr. Bemis," she said in a curious voice.

      It sounded so strange that he wheeled and looked at her, but her eyes were shaded by her lashes, and he got no information there. Her attitude brought to his mind the saying that a man must be masterful with women. The saying was right enough, but Phil had forgotten that it applied only to the women who chanced to be in love with the masterful men.

      Masterfulness is well enough to hold a woman once she was in love, but no man ever won one by masterfulness unaided by personal attraction.

      "Now, I don't want to quarrel with you, Donna," he said as quietly as he could; "but we're going to leave this place in just about fifteen minutes, you and I. So, if there's anything in the camp that you'd like to take along, you'd better stow it away — because we're sure going."

      She made no response, but walked a little way toward the beach and sat down, looking at the sheets of white foam that rose over the sea-wall.

      A few puffs of warm wind had come, presaging a storm from the south, and the wind blew across the gray moorland, bending the grasses as it riffled the waves, even the stout birches bending before it.

      Here and there little spiral twists of the gale blew the fallen leaves into concentric circles, then whirled them high in air. The breeze was sultry and chill by turns. Offshore, a steamer's smoke trailed behind it, parallel with the roaring water. But to the sheltered cove came no breath of the rapidly approaching tempest.

      Phil followed her to where she sat.

      "Did you hear what I said, Donna?"

      She did not seem to hear him. She was watching the rapid home-coming of the gulls and the geese, the former disappearing in the crannies of the rocks overhead, conveying the news of nature's fury in unmusical squawks to their broods of young ones who had not ventured forth, the larger birds sinking to shelter in the dark splotch where Hugh sat waiting beside the place that looked like a newly dug grave.

      "I ask you, Donna, did you hear what I said?"

      Still she pretended not to hear him, and perhaps she did not. Her eyes had the appearance of one who meditates deeply on momentous matters.

      Never before had Phil appeared to such poor advantage as now, when he stood in an attitude intended to be threatening, but which, in view of the unmoved girl, was futile in the extreme, having as it did the appearance of a small boy endeavoring to bully a sister older and wiser than himself.

      Perhaps he realized something of this sort, for he bent over, caught her by the shoulder, and spoke hoarsely in her ear.

      "Maybe the wind's blowing too much for you to understand me. But I said we were going to leave here in fifteen minutes, and I meant it. Do you understand?"

      She remained silent, and he walked over to where the motor stood, busying himself with preparing it for the start. She had not changed her position when he returned, attired in his motor-coat and carrying hers over his arm.

      "Put this on," he said, his tone harsh.

      She rose and regarded him distantly. Somehow, it did not seem that the dictatorial manner was a success with this girl. She no longer seemed the childish little one in need of protection.

      Instead, she had the air of one infinitely able to take care of herself, and preferring much to do so. But he had begun the treatment, and his pride, which lie took for firmness, compelled him to continue it.

      "The motor's all ready," he said. "And we're going. So put this on." He handed her the coat. "I'll throw the hood over, in case it rains; but it's liable to be chilly, and we've got a long way to go to get to Baltimore."

      "I'm not going," she said simply. "I thought I told you that. I'm going to wait here until Hugh gets back."

      "Are you in love with that scoundrel of a Hugh?" he burst out, pinioning her hands. "Are you — are you?"

      Again she spoke in the curious tone she had used before, a peculiar glitter in her eyes which hardened them and robbed her face of the expression of youth.

      "I had quite enough of that once," she said as she removed her hands from his grasp with an ease that astonished him. "No man is ever going to threaten, bully, or misuse me again. Don't you try it — for your own sake, don't!"

      It was the tone one uses to a child. Phil's face flamed with fury, and he caught her hands again, this time holding them in a grip she could not break unless she did herself an injury. But her eyes regarded him just as steadfastly as before.

      "I've warned you not to do that," she said; "and I sha'n't warn you again. Believe me, I sha'n't!"

      His gesture was despairing as he released her, and his hand was very gentle when it rested on her shoulder.

      "Oh, Donna," he cried, "I'm doing it for your own good — honestly I am. It isn't for myself. It's for you. Don't think of Hugh. He isn't worth thinking of.

      "He was my friend, and I thought I knew him. But I didn't, I didn't. He isn't the right sort. You'll find that out. He'll make your life a hell for you. I can't tell you why, but I know, I know. Won't you believe me?"

      Her face was soft again; it held something like maternal tenderness. She did not want to hurt him.

      "Phil," she said, "you're an awfully nice fellow. I like you very much. But you shouldn't talk that way about Hugh. I don't think he'd go back on you. You don't find a friend very often. He's your true friend. You ought always to think of him that way.

      "And you haven't deceived me about the clue he's discovered and is going to follow up, and, afterward, is going to meet us in Philadelphia. Hugh's up in the swamp. He can't get back unless he swims. Get into the canoe and fetch him. Then we'll all start away together, if you like. Won't you?"

      "I can't!" he almost shouted. "I can't! It's on account of you. Won't you take my word for it. Donna — please!"

      She shook her head.

      "I can't believe anything wrong about Hugh. And I won't leave him up there. Go and get him, and then say what you like."

      "I will," the boy suddenly exclaimed. "I will, on one condition. That you'll promise to marry me. I love you, Donna; love you with all my heart and soul. I love you so much I've been miserable ever since I've seen you, because I was afraid you mightn't ever care for me.

      "I was wrong to speak to you the way I did, and I guess it was rotten of me to knock Hugh. But — well, if you cared for him, I'd kill him rather than see him have you. Yes, I might even kill you, too."

      The eyes of tragedy seemed to grow very, very old.

      "You wouldn't kill anybody, Phil. You couldn't. Don't say you would. It isn't a thing to be proud of. Thank Heaven, you haven't something in your heart that burns and burns, and can only be put out with human blood. Be proud you have a nature like that — a nature that couldn't do anything that was mean and treacherous and sneaky.

      "You're not yourself when you talk the way you do now. You're not yourself; and, Heaven pity me, I've made you the way you are. Let me undo the work; let me get down on my knees to you and plead never to take the life of another, no matter what reason you may have to hate. You've done something then that only the Creator can make right. You cannot atone.

      "I'm sorry it's this way between Hugh and yourself. You loved one another; you were so brave, so honest, so true. I — well, no matter — Go get Hugh, Phil, and come back. I'll forget what you've said. Be friends again, won't you?"

      She was kneeling as she stretched up her hands to him. He drew her up in a sudden passionate embrace.

      "Donna, you're so good, so far beyond a fellow like me. But I love you. Say, anyhow, that you don't care for any one else. Give me a chance to win you. I'll go back and get Hugh; I'll even be friends with him, if you say so.

      "But, first, tell me you don't love him. Tell me you never could, never would, love him. Tell me he hasn't got a chance to win you. For, if I thought he had, by Heaven! I'd leave him in that swamp to rot till judgment day!"

      "No, no — no!"

      The girl screamed the words as she caught Phil and suddenly whirled him about, her nails deep in the flesh of his wrists.

      "Let me go. I mean it. Let me go!"

      "Yes, let her go!" said another voice.

      He jerked himself free and faced a man dripping with mud and slime, his wet hair across his forehead, face scratched and bleeding, and jaw set ominously.

      For the moment he did not recognize Hugh. Then his hand went into his pocket, and the revolver came out.

      "It's not wet now," he said; "and it's got dry cartridges in it. Get back in the water where you belong, you rat, or I'll kill you!"

      Hugh lifted a hand and brushed the hair from his eyes, which, seeming to take Phil little into consideration, wandered from the ready motor-car to the coat that Phil wore and the other that he carried over his arm.

      "You might have brought me back to say good-by," he remarked casually, but his tone was that quiet, slow one that Phil had heard before, when, in Tonopah, the two of them had played against a "brace" game and Hugh, discovering it, had demanded their money back. It was an old gambler he had spoken to then; and, though there was no fear in him, he knew the sort of a man who never drew a revolver except to shoot. The money had been returned.

      Phil's finger trembled on the trigger, and he lowered the weapon.

      "We're going away — Donna and I," he said, trying to copy Hugh's tone. "We're going away. Understand?"

      "I understand. Why don't you go?"

      He kept his eyes steadily on his old friend. Phil could not meet their lowering gaze. He turned to Donna.

      "Get into the car," he said. "I mean it. Get into the car. That's about the only way you'll save his life. I didn't want to kill him, but he had to come back, and now he hasn't a chance unless you do what I say. Get into the car."

      "Yes; get into the car, Donna," advised Hugh. "Don't you see that's the only way you'll save my life. Do what he says."

      She looked at him in wonderment for a moment, then crossed and gave him her hand.

      "Good-by, Hugh. I'm sorry."

      "Good-by."

      He turned to Phil.

      "If by any chance you should want to see me in the next few minutes — before you go, of course — why, you'll find me up there on the moor. So long."

      As one who is no longer interested, he climbed the declivity leading out of the cove, and made his way across the gray waste. For some time he kept up a rapid pace; then, reaching a flat stone, he sat down and surveyed the angry, rolling sea and the black masses of clouds that were piling up overhead.

      The wind had begun a persistent howling; the surf was booming in his ears. A sailing-ship showed stark spars as it was tossed high, then sank until only the tip of its mainmast could be seen from shore.

      The uproar was such that he did not hear Phil, even when the latter shouted at him. But he looked up as the wind brought a whiff of gasoline to his nostrils and saw his friend standing there, face white, fingers twitching.

      "I thought maybe you'd want to see me again before you went. I thought you couldn't go like that. Now that you're here, what do you want?"

      "You know what I want," was Phil's response as he stepped back, holding the leveled revolver close to his waistline. "Come across with it."

      "I see," said Hugh suavely. "I'm to give you the means of running off with the treasure and the girl, am I? Well, now, where do I come in? You don't seem to have figured on me wanting anything. That's inconsiderate. Where do I come in?"

      "There's as much treasure left as we've taken," answered Phil. "That's yours. It's not my business how you get it away, Hide it somewhere else, and come back and dig it up again. I sha'n't bother you. But give me that ignition-plug, and be quick about it, or you won't do any bothering about treasure or anything else."

      Hugh pointed to the flat stone.

      "See that? Well, put your revolver there. I'll put the plug beside it. Then we'll have a talk. This world isn't big enough for both of us. One's going to go across. That'll be the one that wins. We're pretty evenly matched. Agreed?"

      "Suits me! Ready?"

      Both crossed to the stone; both made a long arm and placed something there; both moved away. Phil tossed off his motor-coat. Hugh watched him intently.

      "Now, I've got a lot to say to you. You listen to me, and then I'll listen to you. I want the truth, you understand, even if I have to choke it out with my hands. You needn't be afraid of telling me, because only one of us is going to leave this place."

---

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIGHT ON THE CLIFF.

      THEY were two men alone with a wind-swept sky and a stormy sea, a part of nature in its turbulent mood.

      They stood close to one another, almost shouting, for the roar of the surf and the howl of the wind gave the normal tone but little chance to be heard.

      "I want you to understand my position, Phil. You've been my friend — a good friend — a stanch friend. No matter what happened, I'd 'a' swore that you'd been there waiting to do the right thing.

      "I've heard a lot about money-lust, but I didn't think you were the kind to fall for it. But you have. You're all the things a man oughtn't to be.

      "Understand, I'm on to you. You might as well make a clean breast of it before we find out which is the better man. But even now I'm willing to give you a chance. Stay here in this place, and let me take Donna away. That's my last word."

      "That all you got to say?"

      "That's all."

      "All right, then; now, you listen to me."

      He paused, gathering breathy for the long sheets of pale-green water were bursting over the sea-wall into mountains of foam and with the crash of heavy artillery.

      "You say you're on. to me. Well, if you're talking about my leaving you on the island, all right. It might have been a shine trick if you'd been on the square with me — but you weren't. I found your revolver in that treasure-chest.

      "Heaven knows you must 'a' been crazy to have left it there. But I found it, all right. Now, some people would have run straight to somebody else and told 'em about it. But I didn't. And I haven't yet. Donna doesn't know you killed Selfridge, and I didn't have any idea of telling her.

      "I just, handed back your gun to you to let you know I was on. That looks like a pretty good friend, doesn't it? And I was going to leave you here with the rest of the coin, wasn't I? Do you think I would have split to the police about it? Not me. I've been on the level with you, Hugh Coates, and I don't want you to fight until you know I've been — too."

      Hugh stared at him, seemingly trying to read his mind; then he threw back his head and laughed more harshly than the sea-birds screamed — laughed long and laughed loud.

      "I'd thought that's what you had planned out in your mind," he said presently, an evil sneer on his face. "I about sized you and your scheme up. You pup!"

      "Scheme — what d'you mean? You won't have the face to say you didn't kill Selfridge. Why, I've got it on you! I found your revolver there on the islet. You didn't sleep in your bed last night. Why, you —"

      "Lord — what an actor you are!"

      Hugh stepped back and viewed him, aghast. Was it possible to have lived with a man all the years that he had lived with Hugh to find him, in one illuminating instant, the greatest scoundrel in the world?

      "Actor! What are you talking about? You don't dare to say you didn't kill Selfridge. I tell you, I've got it on you, ten ways from the jack. I thought you were going to be on the square —"

      Hugh's laugh was more like a growl now.

      "Do you think you've fooled me for a minute?"

      He advanced toward Phil with clenched fists.

      "Let me tell you something. From the minute you handed me that gun, I knew what you were going to do. I can see what, you did last night as plainly as if I did it myself."

      "Ha — that's good! Guess you can."

      Phil's angry, sneering face was close to his. Hugh caught him by the chin and held his head in that position.

      "I don't think you started out with that intention. But when you saw my gun where it was, you thought that would stand for your acquittal. Oh, I see you! And now let me tell you something else. Selfridge wasn't killed on the islet. He was killed right down here by the camp-fire.

      "He came back with the necklace in his pocket, and he was showing it to you, or I guess he was holding it up to the fire when you hit him across the head with the canoe paddle. I noticed the paddle when I came back the last time — the time I took this ignition-plug. There were two canoe paddles. He used the one with the blue streak when he went away last night, and that's that paddle that lies under the motor-car right now, while the red one is the one that floated down with the canoe. You see, you forgot that, Phil Bemis."

      "So that's how it was done," breathed Phil. "That's how it was done!"

      "Then you saw he was dead, and you lost your nerve. You wanted it to look as if somebody else had done it. So you carted his body into the canoe and rowed him up to the island and left the lantern and my revolver there. Then you came back and left the canoe in the bushes. Are you going to confess?"

      "Confess? When you've just told me how you did it? Are you insane? Come; I won't kill you. I see how it is. You've gone mad. Mad! Good-by!"

      Phil sprang toward the stone where the revolver lay, but Hugh was on his back before he had taken two steps.

      "So you can't even be square at the last deal. Well, it's your finish. I've got the back-hold, and you needn't yell for mercy when I get you down." His fingers gripped Phil's neck. Phil, gurgling, fell back on him, his right hand groping for a sheath-knife in his pocket. Hugh knew the pocket and knew the knife, a present to Phil on his birthday, and — the sardonic humor of it — from him!

      He loosed a hand about Phil's neck and, reaching down, caught the groping fingers which had found the weapon. Phil's other hand had caught Hugh's throat now, and Hugh with a beast-like howl forced the hand holding the knife back, and farther back, until the fingers loosened their hold on it and it fell to the ground. But in the same moment the fist doubled and the arm flew forward, breaking its skin against Hugh's teeth.

      Then, with blood upon them, they rolled to the ground, fighting and clawing like two panthers.

      Each man had released the other's throat, but Hugh's arms were locked about Phil's neck in an endeavor to force back Phil's head until the slender column that supported it should break and the head fall helplessly to the sands.

      Phil, in desperation, gripped Hugh about his middle and dragged him up again, lifting him in air and bringing him down hard upon his feet, the old trick that has broken many a man's back.

      But in this effort Phil left the upper part of his body wholly unguarded; and Hugh, crooking one arm about the back of his neck, reached down and pinioned Phil's left wrist; then, using his opponent's body as a lever, he drew Phil's head down to his chest.

      Now they stood, almost motionless, the sweat running from their bodies, Phil's eyes staring into death. Their muscles were strained to the breaking-point.

      But no mortal man could hold out under the pressure; with a groan of agony, Phil's grasp weakened and his body grew limp. He fell forward, with Hugh under him.

      Swiftly Hugh reversed the positions; then, springing up, he snatched the revolver from the stone, and, in his blind fury of hate, leveled it on the man who was now on hands and knees, striving pitifully for the strength to rise.

      "You've got a minute to live in," grated Hugh. "One minute. Got any prayers to make?"

      Phil turned to him a face gray with pain, but barren of a request for mercy. With a long breath, he drew himself to his feet and tottered a few steps forward.

      "You murderer, you thief, you traitor!" Hugh shrieked above the storm, trying to steel himself for the deed he had sworn to do. "Do you deserve to live? No! And I'm not going to let you live! Your minute's up!"

      His finger trembled on the trigger as he tried to force himself to shoot. But his will was no longer his own.

      Mad with rage, he shook the weapon at the man before him.

      "You think I won't shoot. But I will — I say I will."

      "Hugh — Hugh!" came a voice from afar.

      He turned his eyes, and saw Donna running fleetly toward them.

      "Don't — don't — don't — shoot!" she gasped as she stumbled close to him and fell on her knees. "Don't, Hugh, don't! For Heaven's sake, don't!"

---

CHAPTER IX.
THE MURDER CONFESSED.

      THE revolver fell from Hugh's shaking fingers, and he stared dazedly from the white face of the girl to the gray lips of Phil, which mouthed inarticulate words. He had fallen to his knees again, and was crawling toward the fallen revolver.

      "You love him — you love Phil?"

      "Love Phil!"

      Her tone was as hopeless as it was bitter.

      "Oh, if I only could — if I only could! But my heart had not been trained to love, but to hate. There is no room for love in it now. Why didn't you kill me? I'm not fit to live. If you'd only killed me — if you only had!"

      Hugh, gaping at her, had not seen Phil grasp the revolver that lay at his feet; but the girl had, and, reaching down, she caught the crawler's wrist, exerting a strength equal to his own and tearing the weapon from his grasp.

      "Pity me!" she cried, her tragic eyes turned to the stormy sky. "Heaven pity me. For I've made you both beasts like myself. Listen! That is Heaven's answer."

      A great crash of thunder drowned the words, and a sword of flame pierced the black clouds, casting a terrible light upon the dark waters. The cold rain fell upon her upturned face.

      "I have done it all. But I did not mean that you should suffer. I was afraid. I thought only of shielding myself. I killed him. Yes, I killed him!"

      "In pity's name," wailed Phil, "tell us which one you love, which one you are trying to shield. I take it all back. If you love Hugh, I will go away and never, never see either of you again. But tell us — tell us."

      "You do not believe me? You think I am trying to shield one of you? Oh, you are blind! You cannot see the dark places because you love me. Oh, I'm bad clean through. I'm not worth either of you, even if I could love. But I can't.

      "I tell you I was born with the devil in my heart. If I'd met the right man before my mother married Him, it would have been different. I've been a woman for the last three years — we Southrons mature early — but they didn't know it, and they treated me like a child. My father's friends had shown me something of the life a pretty woman should lead, and I wanted that life. Then, too, I loved my mother — loved her more passionately than you can understand — for, no doubt, you have had others to love you, and I had only her. She married Selfridge.

      "At first, we were happy enough; but then he found that map of the treasure, arid his one idea was to get enough money to come down here and dig it up. He could have got some one to lend him the money; but he was afraid they'd rob him, and so he put my mother and me to a life of drudgery, while his pasty-faced son went to college and spent the money that I saved him by washing the dishes and making the beds.

      "My mother was uncomplaining, and so I stood it. Otherwise — well, there were many paths I could have taken. Are you listening? Are you beginning to understand the kind of a girl I am? When, you do, it'll be easy for you to believe that I killed him."

      Their faces were stony, expressing nothing.

      "Then I thought that, after all, it was only for a year; and then we would be very rich. He hadn't said anything then about keeping all the treasure for his son. It was to be equally divided between my mother and himself.

      "Meanwhile, my mother wasted away before my eyes. But I was blind and didn't understand. You see, he'd calculated to a nicety just how much money it took to run the house, and he gave her just that much every week. But she wanted me to go to dancing-school and learn languages and all that, so she told me she had a little saved away and that would pay for it.

      "And I believed her. But do you know what she was doing? Sitting up until four and five in the morning, making lace undergarments, and then getting up at seven to make the fires.

      "You see, I thought we were going to share the money — she and I. And I pictured myself making a marriage that pleased her and giving her a little grand-daughter and being respected for her sake — her sake!

      "And all the time she was dying that college boy of his was living on the fat of the land, while she would pretend to have eaten so that I might have more.

      "Then she died — from overwork and worry. The one thing in all the world that I loved.

      "Oh, I hated him because he had worked her so hard; but I didn't hate him enough to kill him then, not even at her funeral — because, you see, I thought he meant to be fair — I thought he intended to keep his word and share the treasure with her. And, besides, he had worked very hard," too, even if his son was spending money. So what she had done, he had done, too.

      "But after her death, when I saw that the only reason he had killed my mother was a desire to bring his family back into their silly little position, the hate began to grow in my heart. And when I looked at Horace, and he told me that, since his father wished it, he supposed he'd have to marry me.

      "I thought it was a joke at first. My mother had died working for the money. And I wasn't bad enough to marry that flabby Horace just for the money.

      "I really thought it was a joke. But I found out that he meant it. Unless I married Horace, I could go into the street and find my living the best way I could.

      "I gave him every chance. But he meant it. He thought nothing of me or of anybody else. I don't think he even thought of Horace. It was his petty family name — Selfridge — and Horace was the last of the Selfridges. Everything was for that.

      "So, last night, when he came back from the islet and you two were asleep, I was up and waiting for him. And when I heard the canoe grate on the beach, I couldn't wait, but ran down to meet him.

      "He didn't wait to get out before he stirred all the hate in me again, for he threw the paddle at my feet, and, while he still sat in the canoe, unwrapped the necklace from a piece of burlap, and sat there gloating over it while it shone red from the light of the camp-fire. And it might well be red, for it cost my mother's life.

      "He said it would all be for Horace; that he would entail the estate as they do in England, so that the Selfridge name would always be kept up. And then I told him quite calmly that my mother had died to gain it, and I had slaved for her sake and that I wanted my share.

      "But he laughed and said it was for the Selfridge name. Then I told him furiously: 'If you do not give me half, I will kill you!'

      "He knew I meant it, too, for he reached for his revolver.

      "I caught up the canoe paddle and struck him across the head, and he fell back in the canoe. Then I was afraid. I didn't think I had killed him, and I thought he might kill me; so I picked up your revolver, Hugh, as it lay by the fire, and took the blue paddle and got into the boat with the body and rowed up-stream, his head dangling over the gunwale."

      She covered her face with her hands.

      "Then, as we were passing a tree that swept the water, one of the branches pushed his head forward — a-ah! And I shot in fear and trembling — and that was the shot that killed him. It was not wanton, believe me. I was very much afraid."

      "But how — how did you — you leave the canoe up there?" was Phil's trembling question.

      "It was low tide then, and the marshland was not under water. I left the canoe and put the necklace in his hand, and threw his revolver into the river-bed. I kept Hugh's revolver under my clothes all the time afterward; and then, when the three of us were on the islet and Phil talked about finding a clue, I grew afraid and knocked the lantern over; and then shoved your revolver, Hugh, down deep amid the treasure, where Phil found it.

      "But after I had done it, and I saw you two who had loved each other burning with hatred, some little part of me that was good told me what I was. But it did not triumph until just now, when Phil walked away to find you.

      "Even then I said: 'I'll marry the one who wins.' But — I couldn't.

      "And that's all the story — except he didn't float out to sea. I took the necklace out of his hands and pushed his body off. I — I hated him! And I'm glad he's dead! But you —"

      She crossed over and picked up the ignition-plug and the revolver and walked away. They followed her dazedly. When she reached the cove, she held it up, then fitted it in place.

      "This won't cause any more trouble. I'm going to take it away. And all the treasure that is in the car. The remainder is yours. Good-by! Say — say a prayer sometimes for your little Donna — the one you thought she was!"

      The chug-chug of the motor sounded above the shriek of the storm. They watched the car mount the declivity and disappear.

      For a long time they stood motionless. The rain was falling in great sheets, but they did not feel its sting.

      Out to sea the rocks showed jagged and white, for the roaring breakers leaped too high in air to touch them. A darkness as heavy as that of night had fallen, but through it they could see the great pillars of foam.

      With a persistence that seemed to keep a mountain of spume always above the face of the cliff, the breakers rolled in upon the rocks, bellowing through the darkness like tortured white giants bound to the sea-wall, and rising ever to the full length of their chains.

      Yet through it all the two men stood motionless, until the storm swept over their heads and the foaming, helpless waves began to calm in the waning breath of the tempest. With their falling, the tide rose, assaulting the shores with crashing shocks that vibrated the ground they stood on like minor earthquakes.

      Soon they looked across a lonely sea, where the blackness was changing to gray, and from which the gentler breeze brought the tang of salt to their nostrils.

      It seemed that the wind had died down altogether, and the black water had no break in it; but came in, long and strong, but gentle as the caress of a favorite dog.

      Behind the cloud-banks broke the glow of smoldering fires. A streamer of red touched a wave and turned it to gold. And the two men came out of their dream.

      As though not sure of their awakening, they stepped cautiously, for fear they were sleep-walking, after all. Side by side, speaking no word, they gazed about the cove.

      A sense of desolation oppressed them. The wind had torn down their rough shelters of wood and bark. Their blankets and clothing lay in wet heaps; and as, with one accord, they ascended the declivity, they saw far in the distance a tiny speck that they knew for the fast disappearing motor.

      "She's gone for good," muttered Hugh, "or for evil. Heaven help any other men that fall in with her."

      Silent again, he came back to the cove. And now Phil was muttering:

      "The treasure — we've got the other half. Well — we've got that. And we'll split it with old Selfridge's son. Yes, we'll do the square thing."

      But neither looked at the other until the streamer of sun found its way into the cove and touched with a lurid finger the ruby necklace that the girl had thrown from her as the motor-car whizzed away.

      With a sudden, wild cry, Hugh kicked it far out to sea; then, turning suddenly, he met the wistful eyes of his old-time friend.

      Tears, hot and smarting, sprang to his eyes.

      And, as he stretched out his hands, he saw that Phil, too, was weeping, and they were not ashamed to fall in each other's arms.

(The End.)