England three years ago?"

"Yes. Then you knew?"

"No. Only you have explained to me something which occurred on the very night that I left Dover. What has become of Harry?"

Mrs. Adair shrugged her shoulders.

"I do not know. I have met no one who does know. I do not think that I have met any one who has even seen him since that time. He must have left England."

Durrance pondered on this mysterious disappearance. It was Harry Feversham, then, whom he had seen upon the pier as the Channel boat cast off. The man with the troubled and despairing face was, after all, his friend.

"And Miss Eustace?" he asked after a pause, with a queer timidity. "She has married since?"

Again Mrs. Adair took her time to reply.

"No," said she.

"Then she is still at Ramelton?"

Mrs. Adair shook her head.

"There was a fire at Lennon House a year ago. Did you ever hear of a constable called Bastable?"

"Indeed, I did. He was the means of introducing me to Miss Eustace and her father. I was travelling from Londonderry to Letterkenny. I received a letter from Mr. Eustace, whom I did not know, but who knew from my friends at Letterkenny that I was coming past his house. He asked me to stay the night with him. Naturally enough I declined, with the result that Bastable arrested me on a magistrate's warrant as soon as I landed from the ferry."

"That is the man," said Mrs. Adair, and she told Durrance the history of the fire. It appeared that Bastable's claim to Dermod's friendship rested upon his skill in preparing a particular brew of toddy, which needed a single oyster simmering in the saucepan to give it its perfection of flavour. About two o'clock of a June morning the spirit lamp on which the saucepan stewed had been overset; neither of the two confederates in drink had their wits about them at the moment, and the house was half burnt and the rest of it ruined by water before the fire could be got under.

"There were consequences still more distressing than the destruction of the 

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