" When Lord Avon had left him the captain
remained for some time in a kneeling attitude
with his face sunk upon a chair. Then he rose
and paced slowly up and down the room, his
chin sunk upon his breast. Every now and
then he would pluck at his hair, or shake his
clinched hands in the air, and I saw the
moisture glisten upon his brow. For a time
I lost sight of him, and I heard him opening
drawer after drawer, as though he were in
search of something. Then he stood over by
his dressing-table again, with his back turned
to me. His head was thrown a little back,



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388 RODNEV STONE.
and he had both hands up to the collar of his
shirt as though he were striving to undo it.
"And then there was a sound as if a ewer
had been upset, and down he sank upon the
ground, with his head in the corner, twisted
round at so strange an angle to his shoulders
that one glimpse of it told me that my man
was slipping swiftly from the clutch in which I
fancied that 1 held him. I slid my panel and
was in the room in an instant. His eyelids still
quivered, and it seemed to me as my gaze met
his glazing eyes that I could read both recog-
nition and surprise in them. I laid my knife
upon the floor, and I stretched myself out be-
side him that I might whisper in his ear one
or two little things of which I wished to re-
mind him, but even as I did so he gave a gasp
and was gone.
