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"Lewson Tom Lewson!" he cried. Charly thrust the man inside the tent, and when somebody lighted a lamp Lewson sat down stupidly and looked at them. His face was gaunt and almost blackened by exposure to the frost, his hair was long, and tattered garments of greasy skins hung about him. There was something that suggested bewildered incredulity in his eyes.
He had us hauled up before him guess the other man had to tell him who we were and when I wouldn't answer he slashed me across the face with a dog whip." Lewson clenched a lean brown fist. "Yes" he added, hoarsely, "I was whipped but they should have tied my hands first. It was not my fault I didn't have that man's life.
When Ralph Wriothesley of the Household Cavalry, better known among his intimates as the "Rip," married pretty Miss Lewson, niece of that worldly and bitter-tongued old Lady Fanshawe, everybody said what a fool he had made of himself. What did he, a man who had already developed a capacity for expenditure much in excess of his income, want with a wife who brought little or no grist to the mill?
Somehow he kept pace with Lewson, but he closed one hand tight as he neared the top. When he reached it he stopped suddenly, and his face set hard as he looked down, standing very still. Beneath him lay a strip of dim, green water, with a fringe of soft, white surf at the foot of the promontory, while beyond the latter there stretched away an empty expanse of slowly heaving sea.
At length, when there was only a faint gleam of water sliding by below, he rose stiffly to his feet, and Lewson stretched out a hand for the rifle that lay among the stones. There was a sharp click as he jerked the lever, and then he laughed, a little jarring laugh, as the magazine snapped back.
Then Wyllard sat down limply upon the shingle, for all the strength seemed to suddenly melt out of him, and it was several minutes before he looked up. Lewson was still standing, a shapeless, barbaric figure in his garments of skins, with a dark lined face that had scarcely changed, gazing out to sea.
It was most a minute before three of them pulled me off him, and he was considerably worse to look at then." There was silence for a minute or two, and Wyllard, who felt his own face grow a trifle warm, saw the suggestive hardness in Charly's eyes. Lewson was gazing out into the darkness, but the veins were swollen on his forehead and his whole body had stiffened. Then he spread his hands out.
Wyllard, who had inspected the stores, knew that a fortnight was the very longest that could be counted on, though they ate no more than would keep a modicum of strength in them. From their kind and quality he surmised that the provisions had been intended for the officials in charge of the settlement. "How did you get them, Tom?" he asked. "The thing;" said Lewson quietly, "was simple.
At the same time, she remembered the unfriendly terms in which the housekeeper had alluded to Lord Harry, when they had talked of him. "Did you find no difficulty," she asked, "in persuading Mrs. Lewson to enter your service?" "Oh, yes, plenty of difficulty; I found my bad character in my way, as usual." It was a relief to him, at that moment, to talk of Mrs.
Wyllard, at least, was worn-out physically, and limp from the last few hours' mental strain, while Lewson very seldom said more than was absolutely necessary. Then they made a very frugal meal, and long afterwards Wyllard was haunted by the memory of that dreary afternoon during which he lay upon the shingle watching the slow pulsations of the dim, lifeless sea.
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