lit without
obstruction. Obviously arranged, was his first appraisal of the tableau
there presented. A woman in blue half-knelt, half-lay, upon the young
grass, while a man, bending over, fettered her hands behind her back.
A swarthy and exuberantly bearded fellow, attired in green-and-russet,
stood beside them, displaying magnificent teeth in exactly the grin which
hieratic art imputes to devils. Yet farther off a Dominican Friar sat upon
a stone and displayed rather more unctuous amusement. Three horses and a
mule diversified the background. All in all, a thought larger than life, a
shade too obviously posed, a sign-painter's notion of a heroic picture, was
John Bulmer's verdict. From his holster he drew a pistol.

The lesser rascal rose from the prostrate woman. "Finished, my captain,--"
he began. Against the forest verdure he made an excellent mark. John Bulmer
shot himbecause, for a moment, I
thought that I did not dislike the Duke of Ormskirk quite so much as I
ought to."

He digested this.

"O Jean Bulmer," the girl said, "they tell me you were ever a fortunate
man, but I consider you the unluckiest I know of. For always you are afraid
to be yourself. Sometimes you forget, and are just you--and then, ohe! you
remember, and are only a sulky, fat old gentleman who is not you at all,
somehow; so that at times I detest you, and at times I cannot thoroughly
detest you. So that I played out the comedy, Jean Bulmer. I meant in the
end to tell Louis who you were, of course, and not let them hang you; but I
never quite trusted you; and I never knew whether I detested