Chapter Thirty.

Chapter Thirty.The Motive and the Moral.On the following night we took leave of the strong, big-handed monk on the railway platform in Lucca, and entered the train on the first stage of our journey back to England. He was to return at once to his hermit cell above the swirling Serchio, and remain, as before, the silent guardian of that great secret which, had it been revealed, would have astounded the world.Anxiety consumed us, knowing not how Mabel had fared. Yet with the knowledge that the baneful influence of the adventurer Dawson had been now removed, we returned home somewhat easier in mind. I was wealthy, it was true, rich beyond my wildest dreams, yet the hope of the possession of Mabel as my wife, that had been the mainspring of my life, had been snapped, and in those pensive hours as the sleeping-car express tore northward across the plains of Lombardy and through Switzerland and France, my despairing thoughts were all of her and of her future.A cab took us direct from Charing Cross to Great Russell Street, where I found a note from her dated from Grosvenor Square, asking me to call there on the instant of our return. This I did after a hasty wash, and Carter showed me unceremoniously and at once up to that big white-and-gold drawing-room so familiar to me.In a few moments she entered, looking sweet and charming in her mourning, a smile upon her lips, her hand extended to me in glad welcome. Her face, I thought, betrayed a keen anxiety, and the pallor of her cheeks showed how sorely her heart was torn by grief and terror.“Yes, Mabel, I am back again,” I said, holding her hand and gazing into her eyes. “I have discovered your father’s secret!”“What?” she cried in eager surprise, “you have? Tell me what it is—do tell me,” she urged breathlessly.I first obtained from her a promise of secrecy, and then, standing with her, I described our visit to the lonely hermit’s cell, our reception by the monk Antonio, and our subsequent discoveries.She listened in blank amazement at my story of the hidden treasure of the Vatican, until I described the attack made upon me by Dawson, and its tragic sequel, whereupon she cried—“Then if that man is dead—actually dead—I am free!”“How? Explain!” I demanded.“Well, now that circumstances have combined to thus liberate me, I will confess to you,” she responded after a brief pause. Her face had suddenly flushed and glancing across at the door, she first reassured herself that it was closed. Then in a deep, intense voice she said, looking straight into my face with those wonderful eyes of hers, “I have been the victim of a foul, base plot which I will explain, so that, knowing the whole truth, you may be able to judge how I have suffered, and whether I have not acted from a sense of right and duty. For devilish cunning and ingenuity the conspiracy against me surely has no equal, as you will see. I have only now succeeded in discovering the real truth and the deep hidden motive behind it all. My first meeting with Herbert Hales was apparently accidental, in Widemarsh Street, Hereford. I was only a girl just finishing my schooldays, and as full of romantic ideas concerning men as all girls are. I saw him often, and although I knew that he picked up a precarious living on race-courses, I allowed him to court me. At first I confess that I fell deeply in love with him, a fact which he did not fail to detect, and during that summer at Mayvill I met him secretly on many evenings in the park. After we had thus been acquainted about three months, he one night suggested that we should marry, but by that time, having detected that his love for me was only feigned, I refused. Evening after evening we met, but I steadfastly declined to marry him, until one night he showed himself in his true colours, for to my abject amazement he told me that he was well acquainted with my father’s life-story, and further he alleged that there was one dark incident connected with it—namely that my father, in order to possess himself of the secret by which he had gained his wealth, had murdered the Italian seaman, Pensi, on board theAnnie Curtisoff the Spanish coast. I refused to hear such a terrible allegation, but to my surprise he caused me to meet my father’s friend, the man Dawson, by appointment, and the last-named declared that he was the actual witness of my father’s crime. When we were alone that same night as we walked by a bypath across the park he put his intentions to me plainly—namely, that I should be compelled to accept him as my husband, and marry him in secret against my father’s knowledge. Otherwise he would give information to the police regarding the allegation against my father.”“The blackguard!” I cried.Continuing, she said, “He pointed out how Dawson, my father’s closest friend, was the actual witness, and so completely did I find myself and my father’s reputation in his unscrupulous hands, that I was compelled, after a week of vain resistance, to accept his condition of secrecy and consent to the odious marriage. From that moment, although I returned home the instant we were made man and wife, I was completely in his power, and had to pay blackmail to him at every demand. After he had secured me as his victim, his true passionate instincts—those of a man who lived by his wits and to whom a woman’s heart was of no account—were almost instantly revealed, and from that moment until the present, although believed to be a single girl, and chaperoned to all sorts of functions in the brightest set in London, yet I lived in mortal terror of the man who was by law my husband.”She paused to gain breath, and I saw that her lips were white, and that she was trembling.“Fortunately,” she went on at last, “you were able to rescue me, otherwise the plot would have been successful in every particular. Until yesterday, I was entirely unaware of the real motive of forcing me into that marriage, but now it is revealed I can see the deep cunning of the master mind that planned it. Herbert Hales, it seems, first sought me out because of a chance remark of old Mr Hales regarding my father’s great and mysterious fortune. An adventurer, he saw that he might contract marriage with myself, as heiress to my father’s possessions. When we had been acquainted about a month, Dawson chanced to be over from Italy, staying with us at Mayvill for a few days, and one evening while out shooting wood pigeons he discovered us walking together at the edge of the wood skirting the park. The instant he saw us he formed a devilish design, and next day, set about making inquiries regarding Hales, and, ascertaining the character of the man, met him and made a curious compact with him to the effect that if he, Dawson, so arranged matters that a secret marriage was contracted between myself and Hales, the latter was, in the case of my father’s death, to receive the sum of two thousand a year in lieu of any claim against the estate on his wife’s behalf. He pointed out to Hales that by a secret marriage with me he would obtain a source of continual revenue, as I dare not refuse his demands for money, because if I, on my part, exposed the secret of our union, he could at once take up his correct position as the husband of the millionaire’s daughter. This having been arranged, he told Hales many true facts concerning my father’s life at sea in order to mislead me, but added an allegation which, being corroborated by himself, I unfortunately believed to be true, that my father had committed murder in order to obtain that little pack of cards with the cipher upon them. Dawson, who had quickly judged the character of Hales, secretly aided him to get me completely in his power, although, of course, I was entirely unaware of it. His motive in securing my marriage in such compulsory circumstances was a far-seeing one, for he recognised that had I married the man I loved, my husband would, on my father’s death, see that my rights as heiress were properly established, while if, on the other hand, I were Hales’ wife, afraid to acknowledge my matrimonialmésalliance, and Hales was by the compact entirely in his power, he would in the end obtain complete possession of my father’s money. He knew, of course, that his position as one of the holders of the secret of the Vatican treasure, as it now turns out to be, made it imperative for my father to leave the management of my affairs in his hands, and therefore he took every precaution to secure complete possession upon my poor father’s death. The ingenious manner in which he secretly placed Herbert Hales in possession of certain facts which, I believed, were only known to my father and myself, the subtle manner in which he corroborated his own untruth, alleging that my father was guilty of a crime, and the secrecy with which he aided Hales to marry me under sheer compulsion were, I can now see, marvels of clever conspiracy. I feared, nay, I felt convinced all along, that the terrible secret of my father as known to Hales was the awful truth, and it is only yesterday that, with the aid of old Mr Hales, I succeeded in discovering in a back street in Grimsby a man named Palmer, who was seaman on board theAnnie Curtisand present at the Italian’s death. He tells me that the allegation against my father is absolutely false, and that on the contrary he was the man’s best and kindest friend, and in acknowledgment of this, the Italian gave him the little chamois leather bag containing the cards. My fears as to the secret having been obtained by foul play are therefore entirely set at rest; and the stain removed from my poor father’s memory.”“But the mode of your father’s death?” I said, amazed at this remarkable revelation of craft and deception.“Ah!” she sighed, “my opinion has altered. He died from natural causes just at a moment when a secret attempt was to be made to assassinate him. By that same train up to Manchester, Herbert Hales—who was, of course, unknown to my father—and the man Dawson travelled in company, and I have no doubt that it was their intention if opportunity was afforded, to strike a blow with the same fatal knife with which the attempt was later made upon you. Death, however, cheated them of their victim.”“But this villainous scoundrel who is your husband? What of him?”“The judgment of Heaven has already fallen upon him,” was her low, almost mechanical answer. “What!” I gasped eagerly. “Is he dead?”“He quarrelled here with Dawson on the night you left London, and again the one-eyed man exhibited that remarkable craft he possessed, for, in order to rid himself of Hales and the ugly facts of which he was in possession, he appears to have given confidential information to the police of a certain robbery committed about a year ago after Kempton Park races, in which the man from whom a large sum of money was stolen was so severely injured that he died. Two detectives went to Hales’ lodgings in Lower Seymour Street about two o’clock in the morning. They demanded admittance to his room, but he, realising that Dawson had carried out his threat and that the truth was out, barricaded himself in. When they at last forced the door, they found him stretched dead upon the floor with a revolver lying beside him.”“Then you are free, Mabel—free to marry me!” I cried, almost beside myself with joy.She hung her head, and answered in a tone so low that I could hardly catch the words—“No, I am unworthy, Gilbert. I deceived you.”“The past is past, and all forgotten,” I exclaimed, snatching up her hand, and bending until my hot, passionate lips touched hers. “You are mine, Mabel—mine alone!” I cried. “That is, of course, if you dare to trust your future in my hands.”“Dare!” she echoed, smiling through the tears which filled her eyes. “Have I not trusted you these past five years? Have you not indeed been always my best friend, from that night when we first met until this moment?”“But have you sufficient regard for me, dearest?” I asked, deeply touched by her words. “I mean, do you love me?”“I do, Gilbert,” she faltered, with eyes downcast in modesty. “I have loved no man except yourself.”Then I clasped her to me, and in those moments of my new-born ecstasy I repeated to my love the oft-told tale—the tale that every man the world over tells the woman before whom he bows in adoration.And what more need I say? A delicious sense of possession thrilled my heart. She was mine! mine for ever! I was convinced that in those terrible sufferings through which she had passed, she had been always loyal and true to me. She had, poor girl, like her father, been the innocent victim of the ingenious adventurer, Dawson, and the unscrupulous young blackguard who was his tool, and who had inveigled her into marriage in order to subsequently possess themselves of the whole of Blair’s gigantic fortune.The wheel of fortune, however, ran back upon them, and instead of success their own avarice and ingenuity resulted in their defeat, and at the same time placed me in the position they had intended to occupy.

On the following night we took leave of the strong, big-handed monk on the railway platform in Lucca, and entered the train on the first stage of our journey back to England. He was to return at once to his hermit cell above the swirling Serchio, and remain, as before, the silent guardian of that great secret which, had it been revealed, would have astounded the world.

Anxiety consumed us, knowing not how Mabel had fared. Yet with the knowledge that the baneful influence of the adventurer Dawson had been now removed, we returned home somewhat easier in mind. I was wealthy, it was true, rich beyond my wildest dreams, yet the hope of the possession of Mabel as my wife, that had been the mainspring of my life, had been snapped, and in those pensive hours as the sleeping-car express tore northward across the plains of Lombardy and through Switzerland and France, my despairing thoughts were all of her and of her future.

A cab took us direct from Charing Cross to Great Russell Street, where I found a note from her dated from Grosvenor Square, asking me to call there on the instant of our return. This I did after a hasty wash, and Carter showed me unceremoniously and at once up to that big white-and-gold drawing-room so familiar to me.

In a few moments she entered, looking sweet and charming in her mourning, a smile upon her lips, her hand extended to me in glad welcome. Her face, I thought, betrayed a keen anxiety, and the pallor of her cheeks showed how sorely her heart was torn by grief and terror.

“Yes, Mabel, I am back again,” I said, holding her hand and gazing into her eyes. “I have discovered your father’s secret!”

“What?” she cried in eager surprise, “you have? Tell me what it is—do tell me,” she urged breathlessly.

I first obtained from her a promise of secrecy, and then, standing with her, I described our visit to the lonely hermit’s cell, our reception by the monk Antonio, and our subsequent discoveries.

She listened in blank amazement at my story of the hidden treasure of the Vatican, until I described the attack made upon me by Dawson, and its tragic sequel, whereupon she cried—

“Then if that man is dead—actually dead—I am free!”

“How? Explain!” I demanded.

“Well, now that circumstances have combined to thus liberate me, I will confess to you,” she responded after a brief pause. Her face had suddenly flushed and glancing across at the door, she first reassured herself that it was closed. Then in a deep, intense voice she said, looking straight into my face with those wonderful eyes of hers, “I have been the victim of a foul, base plot which I will explain, so that, knowing the whole truth, you may be able to judge how I have suffered, and whether I have not acted from a sense of right and duty. For devilish cunning and ingenuity the conspiracy against me surely has no equal, as you will see. I have only now succeeded in discovering the real truth and the deep hidden motive behind it all. My first meeting with Herbert Hales was apparently accidental, in Widemarsh Street, Hereford. I was only a girl just finishing my schooldays, and as full of romantic ideas concerning men as all girls are. I saw him often, and although I knew that he picked up a precarious living on race-courses, I allowed him to court me. At first I confess that I fell deeply in love with him, a fact which he did not fail to detect, and during that summer at Mayvill I met him secretly on many evenings in the park. After we had thus been acquainted about three months, he one night suggested that we should marry, but by that time, having detected that his love for me was only feigned, I refused. Evening after evening we met, but I steadfastly declined to marry him, until one night he showed himself in his true colours, for to my abject amazement he told me that he was well acquainted with my father’s life-story, and further he alleged that there was one dark incident connected with it—namely that my father, in order to possess himself of the secret by which he had gained his wealth, had murdered the Italian seaman, Pensi, on board theAnnie Curtisoff the Spanish coast. I refused to hear such a terrible allegation, but to my surprise he caused me to meet my father’s friend, the man Dawson, by appointment, and the last-named declared that he was the actual witness of my father’s crime. When we were alone that same night as we walked by a bypath across the park he put his intentions to me plainly—namely, that I should be compelled to accept him as my husband, and marry him in secret against my father’s knowledge. Otherwise he would give information to the police regarding the allegation against my father.”

“The blackguard!” I cried.

Continuing, she said, “He pointed out how Dawson, my father’s closest friend, was the actual witness, and so completely did I find myself and my father’s reputation in his unscrupulous hands, that I was compelled, after a week of vain resistance, to accept his condition of secrecy and consent to the odious marriage. From that moment, although I returned home the instant we were made man and wife, I was completely in his power, and had to pay blackmail to him at every demand. After he had secured me as his victim, his true passionate instincts—those of a man who lived by his wits and to whom a woman’s heart was of no account—were almost instantly revealed, and from that moment until the present, although believed to be a single girl, and chaperoned to all sorts of functions in the brightest set in London, yet I lived in mortal terror of the man who was by law my husband.”

She paused to gain breath, and I saw that her lips were white, and that she was trembling.

“Fortunately,” she went on at last, “you were able to rescue me, otherwise the plot would have been successful in every particular. Until yesterday, I was entirely unaware of the real motive of forcing me into that marriage, but now it is revealed I can see the deep cunning of the master mind that planned it. Herbert Hales, it seems, first sought me out because of a chance remark of old Mr Hales regarding my father’s great and mysterious fortune. An adventurer, he saw that he might contract marriage with myself, as heiress to my father’s possessions. When we had been acquainted about a month, Dawson chanced to be over from Italy, staying with us at Mayvill for a few days, and one evening while out shooting wood pigeons he discovered us walking together at the edge of the wood skirting the park. The instant he saw us he formed a devilish design, and next day, set about making inquiries regarding Hales, and, ascertaining the character of the man, met him and made a curious compact with him to the effect that if he, Dawson, so arranged matters that a secret marriage was contracted between myself and Hales, the latter was, in the case of my father’s death, to receive the sum of two thousand a year in lieu of any claim against the estate on his wife’s behalf. He pointed out to Hales that by a secret marriage with me he would obtain a source of continual revenue, as I dare not refuse his demands for money, because if I, on my part, exposed the secret of our union, he could at once take up his correct position as the husband of the millionaire’s daughter. This having been arranged, he told Hales many true facts concerning my father’s life at sea in order to mislead me, but added an allegation which, being corroborated by himself, I unfortunately believed to be true, that my father had committed murder in order to obtain that little pack of cards with the cipher upon them. Dawson, who had quickly judged the character of Hales, secretly aided him to get me completely in his power, although, of course, I was entirely unaware of it. His motive in securing my marriage in such compulsory circumstances was a far-seeing one, for he recognised that had I married the man I loved, my husband would, on my father’s death, see that my rights as heiress were properly established, while if, on the other hand, I were Hales’ wife, afraid to acknowledge my matrimonialmésalliance, and Hales was by the compact entirely in his power, he would in the end obtain complete possession of my father’s money. He knew, of course, that his position as one of the holders of the secret of the Vatican treasure, as it now turns out to be, made it imperative for my father to leave the management of my affairs in his hands, and therefore he took every precaution to secure complete possession upon my poor father’s death. The ingenious manner in which he secretly placed Herbert Hales in possession of certain facts which, I believed, were only known to my father and myself, the subtle manner in which he corroborated his own untruth, alleging that my father was guilty of a crime, and the secrecy with which he aided Hales to marry me under sheer compulsion were, I can now see, marvels of clever conspiracy. I feared, nay, I felt convinced all along, that the terrible secret of my father as known to Hales was the awful truth, and it is only yesterday that, with the aid of old Mr Hales, I succeeded in discovering in a back street in Grimsby a man named Palmer, who was seaman on board theAnnie Curtisand present at the Italian’s death. He tells me that the allegation against my father is absolutely false, and that on the contrary he was the man’s best and kindest friend, and in acknowledgment of this, the Italian gave him the little chamois leather bag containing the cards. My fears as to the secret having been obtained by foul play are therefore entirely set at rest; and the stain removed from my poor father’s memory.”

“But the mode of your father’s death?” I said, amazed at this remarkable revelation of craft and deception.

“Ah!” she sighed, “my opinion has altered. He died from natural causes just at a moment when a secret attempt was to be made to assassinate him. By that same train up to Manchester, Herbert Hales—who was, of course, unknown to my father—and the man Dawson travelled in company, and I have no doubt that it was their intention if opportunity was afforded, to strike a blow with the same fatal knife with which the attempt was later made upon you. Death, however, cheated them of their victim.”

“But this villainous scoundrel who is your husband? What of him?”

“The judgment of Heaven has already fallen upon him,” was her low, almost mechanical answer. “What!” I gasped eagerly. “Is he dead?”

“He quarrelled here with Dawson on the night you left London, and again the one-eyed man exhibited that remarkable craft he possessed, for, in order to rid himself of Hales and the ugly facts of which he was in possession, he appears to have given confidential information to the police of a certain robbery committed about a year ago after Kempton Park races, in which the man from whom a large sum of money was stolen was so severely injured that he died. Two detectives went to Hales’ lodgings in Lower Seymour Street about two o’clock in the morning. They demanded admittance to his room, but he, realising that Dawson had carried out his threat and that the truth was out, barricaded himself in. When they at last forced the door, they found him stretched dead upon the floor with a revolver lying beside him.”

“Then you are free, Mabel—free to marry me!” I cried, almost beside myself with joy.

She hung her head, and answered in a tone so low that I could hardly catch the words—

“No, I am unworthy, Gilbert. I deceived you.”

“The past is past, and all forgotten,” I exclaimed, snatching up her hand, and bending until my hot, passionate lips touched hers. “You are mine, Mabel—mine alone!” I cried. “That is, of course, if you dare to trust your future in my hands.”

“Dare!” she echoed, smiling through the tears which filled her eyes. “Have I not trusted you these past five years? Have you not indeed been always my best friend, from that night when we first met until this moment?”

“But have you sufficient regard for me, dearest?” I asked, deeply touched by her words. “I mean, do you love me?”

“I do, Gilbert,” she faltered, with eyes downcast in modesty. “I have loved no man except yourself.”

Then I clasped her to me, and in those moments of my new-born ecstasy I repeated to my love the oft-told tale—the tale that every man the world over tells the woman before whom he bows in adoration.

And what more need I say? A delicious sense of possession thrilled my heart. She was mine! mine for ever! I was convinced that in those terrible sufferings through which she had passed, she had been always loyal and true to me. She had, poor girl, like her father, been the innocent victim of the ingenious adventurer, Dawson, and the unscrupulous young blackguard who was his tool, and who had inveigled her into marriage in order to subsequently possess themselves of the whole of Blair’s gigantic fortune.

The wheel of fortune, however, ran back upon them, and instead of success their own avarice and ingenuity resulted in their defeat, and at the same time placed me in the position they had intended to occupy.

Chapter Thirty One.Conclusion.Mabel and I are now man and wife, and surely no couple in London are as perfectly happy as we are.To us, after the storms and stress of life, has come a calm and blissful peace. The faithful Ford is back as my secretary, while we frequently chaff Reggie, who has sold his lace business, about his profound admiration of Dolly Dawson, who, even though the daughter of an adventurer, is, I am compelled to admit, a modest and most charming girl, who would, I feel sure, make my old chum an excellent life-partner. Indeed, the other day he inquired in strict confidence of Mrs Percival, who has apartments with us at Mayvill, whether she thought Mabel would take it ill were he to propose. Therefore his ideas are evidently now running in the direction of matrimony. Old Hales still lives at the Crossway at Owston, and recently came with his wife to London to visit us.As regards the Cardinal’s secret, no word of it has ever leaked out to the public, it being far too carefully guarded by us. Over the entrance to that great storehouse of wealth the grave, black-bearded monk in the frayed habit, Fra Antonio, the friend of the poor of Lucca, still lives, dividing his lonely life between solitary meditation and attending to the wants of the destitute in that crowded city away down the green valley.The Church of Rome has a long memory. For years, it seems, active steps have been in progress to search and recover the great treasure given by Pius IX to his favourite Sannini. The presence in London of the well-known cleric, Monsignore Galli, of Rimini, and his clandestine interview with Dolly, was, according to her own avowal, in order to ascertain some facts regarding her father’s recent movements, it being known that he had a few months before sold to a dealer in Paris the historic jewelled crucifix worn by Clement VIII which was placed in the Vatican treasury after his death in 1605.Many men in the City are aware of the great fortune that has come to me, and you yourself are perhaps acquainted with the white exterior of one house in Grosvenor Square, yet none assuredly know the strange facts which I have here for the first time put on record.A month ago I was seated in that silent little cell which so cunningly conceals the vast wealth of which I am now possessor and which has placed me among the millionaires of England, and in relating to him in detail Mabel’s tragic story of how cruelly she was victimised, I was expressing my mind freely upon the dastardly action of that man who had been engulfed in the subterranean flood, when the kindly monk with the furrowed face raised his hand and, pointing to the great crucifix upon the wall, said in that calm voice of his—“No, no, Signor Greenwood. Hatred and malice should not rankle in the heart of the honest man. Rather let us remember those Divine words: ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.’ As we forgive them! Therefore let us forgive the ‘One-Eyed Englishman.’”The End.

Mabel and I are now man and wife, and surely no couple in London are as perfectly happy as we are.

To us, after the storms and stress of life, has come a calm and blissful peace. The faithful Ford is back as my secretary, while we frequently chaff Reggie, who has sold his lace business, about his profound admiration of Dolly Dawson, who, even though the daughter of an adventurer, is, I am compelled to admit, a modest and most charming girl, who would, I feel sure, make my old chum an excellent life-partner. Indeed, the other day he inquired in strict confidence of Mrs Percival, who has apartments with us at Mayvill, whether she thought Mabel would take it ill were he to propose. Therefore his ideas are evidently now running in the direction of matrimony. Old Hales still lives at the Crossway at Owston, and recently came with his wife to London to visit us.

As regards the Cardinal’s secret, no word of it has ever leaked out to the public, it being far too carefully guarded by us. Over the entrance to that great storehouse of wealth the grave, black-bearded monk in the frayed habit, Fra Antonio, the friend of the poor of Lucca, still lives, dividing his lonely life between solitary meditation and attending to the wants of the destitute in that crowded city away down the green valley.

The Church of Rome has a long memory. For years, it seems, active steps have been in progress to search and recover the great treasure given by Pius IX to his favourite Sannini. The presence in London of the well-known cleric, Monsignore Galli, of Rimini, and his clandestine interview with Dolly, was, according to her own avowal, in order to ascertain some facts regarding her father’s recent movements, it being known that he had a few months before sold to a dealer in Paris the historic jewelled crucifix worn by Clement VIII which was placed in the Vatican treasury after his death in 1605.

Many men in the City are aware of the great fortune that has come to me, and you yourself are perhaps acquainted with the white exterior of one house in Grosvenor Square, yet none assuredly know the strange facts which I have here for the first time put on record.

A month ago I was seated in that silent little cell which so cunningly conceals the vast wealth of which I am now possessor and which has placed me among the millionaires of England, and in relating to him in detail Mabel’s tragic story of how cruelly she was victimised, I was expressing my mind freely upon the dastardly action of that man who had been engulfed in the subterranean flood, when the kindly monk with the furrowed face raised his hand and, pointing to the great crucifix upon the wall, said in that calm voice of his—“No, no, Signor Greenwood. Hatred and malice should not rankle in the heart of the honest man. Rather let us remember those Divine words: ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.’ As we forgive them! Therefore let us forgive the ‘One-Eyed Englishman.’”

The End.

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