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"This is very dreadful about poor Mr. Clive."

"Very," he answered moodily.

"Why should poachers kill him?" she asked. "Why should they want to?"

"I don't know," he answered, watching not her but her soft throat, where he could see a pulse fluttering. "Perhaps it wasn't poachers," he added.

She started violently, and gave a quick look that seemed to make yet more certain the certainty he already entertained.

"Who else could it be?" she asked in a low voice.

He did not answer.

After what seemed a long time she said:

"You asked me a question once--do you remember?"

He shook his head.

"Why don't you speak? Why can't you speak?" she cried angrily. "Why can't you say something instead of just shaking your head?"

"You see, I've asked you so many questions," he said slowly. "Perhaps I shall ask you some more some day--which question do you mean?"

"I mean when you asked me if I had ever met any one who spoke in a very shrill, high whistling sort of voice? Do you remember?"

"Yes," he said. "You wouldn't tell me."

"Well, I will now," she said. "I did meet a man once with a voice like that. Do you remember the night you, came here that I drove away in the car with a packing-case you carried downstairs?"

"Do I--remember?" he gasped, for that memory, and the thought of how she had driven away into the night with, that grisly thing behind her on the car had never since left his mind by night or by day.

"Yes," she exclaimed impatiently. "Why do you keep staring so? Are you as stupid as you choose to look? Do you remember?"

"I remember," he answered heavily. "I remember very well."

"Well, then, the man I took that packing-case to had a voice just like that--high and shrill, whistling almost."

"I thought as much," said Dunn. "May I ask you another question?"

She nodded.

"May I smoke?"

She nodded again with a touch of impatience.

He took a cigarette from his pocket and put it in his mouth and lighted a match, but the match, when he had lighted it, he used to put light to a scrap of folded paper with writing on it, like a note.

This piece of paper he used to light his cigarette with and when he had done so he watched the paper burn to an ash, not dropping it to the ground till the little flame stung his fingers.

The ash that had fallen he ground into the path where they stood with the heel of his boot.

"What have you burned there?" she asked, as if she suspected it was something of importance he had destroyed.

In fact it was the note that had fallen from dead John Clive's hand wherein Ella had asked him to meet her at the oak where he had met his death.

That bit of paper would have been enough, Dunn thought, to place a harsh hempen noose about the soft white throat he watched where the little pulse still fluttered up and down. But now it was burnt and utterly destroyed, and no one would ever see it.

At the thought he laughed and she drew back, very startled.

"Oh, what is the matter?" she exclaimed.

"Nothing," he answered. "Nothing in all the world except that I love you."

CHAPTER XVIII

ROBERT DUNN'S ENEMY

When he had said this he went a step or two aside and sat down on the stump of a tree. He was very agitated and disturbed for he had not in the very least meant to say such a thing, he had not even known that he really felt like that.

It was, indeed, a rush and power of quite unexpected passion that had swept him away and made him for the moment lose all control of himself. Ella showed much more composure. She had become extraordinarily pale, but otherwise she did not appear in any way agitated.

She remained silent, her eyes bent on the ground, her only movement a gesture by which she rubbed softly and in turn each of her wrists as though they hurt her.

"Well, can't you say something?" he asked roughly, annoyed by her persistent silence.

"I don't see that there's anything for me to say," she answered.

"Oh, well now then," he muttered; quite disconcerted.

She raised her eyes from the ground, and for the first time looked full at him, in her expression both curiosity and resentment.