Chancery suit between us, if I did. Wait till
we reach Melazzo—there are plenty of lawyers
in Garibaldi's army."

"I shall leave some of it to you, Castletowers,"
said Saxon.

"Oh king, live for ever! I want neither thy
money nor thy life."

Saxon looked at his friend, and his thoughts
again reverted to the words that he had heard
in his cousin's office on the day when he first
made acquaintance with Signor Nazzari, of
Austin Friars.

"Can you give me any idea of what a mortgage is!"
he asked, presently.

"No one better," replied the Earl, bitterly.
"A mortgage is the poison which a dying man
leaves in the cup of his successor. A mortgage
is an iron collar which, while he wears it, makes
a slave of a free-born man, and, when he earns
the right to take it off, leaves him a beggar."

"You speak strongly."

"I speak from hard experience. A mortgage
has left me poor for life; and you know what
my poverty has cost me."

"But if means could be taken to pay that
mortgage off . ..."

"It is paid off," interrupted Lord Castletowers.
" Every penny of it."

"Would you mind telling me how much it
was?" asked Saxon, hesitatingly.

"Not at all. It was a very large sum for me,
though it may not sound like a very large sum
to you. Twenty-five thousand pounds."

Saxon uttered a half-suppressed exclamation.

"Will you let me ask one more question?"
he said. "Did you owe this money to a man
named Behrens?"

"How do you know that?"

"Never mind—only tell me."

"Yes. To Oliver Behrens—a London man
—the same who bought that outlying corner of
our dear old park, and—confound him!—had
the insolence to build a modern villa on it."

"And you have really paid him?"

"Of course I have paid him."

"How long ago?"

"Two years ago, at the least. Perhaps
longer."

Saxon put his hand to his forehead in a be-
wildered way. A doubt—a dark and terrible
doubt that had never been wholly banished—
started up again in his mind, and assumed for
the first time distinct and definite proportions.

"And now, having answered all your questions
by the book, I shall expect you to answer
mine," said Lord Castletowers.

"Pray do not ask me any," said Saxon,
hurriedly.

"" But I must do so. I must know where you
heard of Oliver Behrens, and how you came to
know that he was my father's mortgagee. Did
Mr. Trefalden tell you?"

Saxon shook his head.

"And this is not the first time that you have
asked me whether I am in debt," urged the
Earl. "I remember once before—that day,
you know, at home, when Montecuculi came—
you seemed to think I had some money trouble
on my mind. Surely it cannot be Mr. Trefalden
who has given you this impression?"

"No—indeed, no."

"Because he knows my affairs as well, or
better than I know them myself."

"He has never spoken to me of your affairs,
Castletowers—never," said Saxon, earnestly.

"Then who else has been doing so? Not
Vaughan? Not Colonna?"

But Saxon entreated his friend not to urge
any more questions upon him, and with this
request, after one or two ineffectual remonstrances,
the Earl complied.

And now it was already dawning day. The
moon had paled and sunk long since, and a
faint mist, above which the great mountain
towered, ghost-like, with its crown of snow and
smoke, had spread itself along the coast.
Presently the light in the east grew brighter and
wider, and a strange, glorious colour—a colour
compounded, as it were, of rose and gold—
flushed suddenly over the snow-fields of Etna.
For a moment the grand summit seemed to hang
as if suspended in the air, glowing and
transfigured, like the face of the lawgiver to whom
the Lord had spoken as a man speaketh unto
his friend. Then, almost as suddenly as it had
come there, the glory faded off, and left only
the pure sunshine in its place. At the same
moment, the mists along the coast began to rise
in long vaporous lines about the sides of the
mountain; and, by-and-by, as they drifted slowly
away to the leeward, a long rocky promontory
that looked like an island, but was, in fact,
connected with the mainland by a sandy flat,
became dimly visible far away at sea.

"Ecco, signore—ecco la rocca di Melazzo!"
said the Palermitan pilot.

But this announcement, which would have
raised Saxon's pulse to fever heat half an hour
before, now scarcely quickened the beating of
his heart by a single throb. He was thinking
of William Trefalden; vainly regretting the
promise by which he had bound himself to repeat
no word of Mr. Behrens' conversation; and
enduring in silence the first shock of that vague
and terrible mistrust which had now struck root
in his mind, hereafter to flourish and bear bitter
fruit.

CHAPTER LXI. HEAD-QUARTERS.

THE promontory of Melazzo reaches out
about four miles into the sea, curving round to
the westward at its furthest point, so as to
form a little bay, and terminating in a lighthouse.
Consisting as it does of a chain of
rocks varying from a mile to a quarter of a mile
in breadth, and rising in places to a height of
seven hundred feet, it looks almost like some
sleeping sea monster heaving its huge bulk half
above the waters. Towards the mainland, these
rocks end abruptly over against the little isthmus
on which the town is built; and upon their
lower terraces, frowning over the streets below,
and protected by the higher cliffs beyond, the
castle stands, commanding land and sea. It is