“We will see. There is at the heart of every man a seed of God’s sowing, which neither time nor men may kill. I shall find it in yours, my lad. Oh, think of it! When you stood at the wicket in the playing fields of Harrow, your beloved school, your friends about you when you had a home, a mother, sisters, gentle hands to welcome you; was it to bring you to such a night as this? No, indeed. There is something which is sleeping, but may wake again—a voice to call you; a hand upon your shoulder compelling you to look back. Let it be my hand, lad. Let mine be the voice which you hear. It will be kinder than others which may speak afterwards.”

His face blanched oddly at my words. An hour ago he would have heard them with oaths and curses. Now, however, his bravado had gone with his courage. Perhaps I had made no real appeal to the old instincts of his boyhood. But his fear and his hope of some advantage of confession brought him to his knees.

“I can’t tell you much,” he stammered.

“You can tell me what you know.”

“Well—what about it then?”

“Ah! that is reason speaking. First, the name of the man.”

“What man do you speak of?”

“The man who sent you to this house. Was it from Paris, from Rome, from Vienna? You are wearing French boots, I see. Then it was Paris, was it not?”

“Oh, call it Paris, if you like.”

“And the man—a Frenchman?”

“I can’t tell you. He spoke English. I met him at Quaz-Arts, and he introduced me to the others—a big man with a slash across his jaw and pock-marked. He kept me at a great hotel six weeks. I was dead out of luck—went over there to get work in a motor-works and got chucked—well, I don’t say for what. Then Val came along⁠——”

“Val—a Christian name?”

“I heard the rest of it was Imroth. Some said he was a German Jew who had been in Buenos Ayres. I don’t know. We were to get the stuff easy and all cross back by different routes. Mine was Southampton—Havre. I’d have been back in Paris to-morrow night but for you. Good God, what luck!”

“The best, perhaps, you ever had in your wretched life. Please to go on. You were to return to Paris—with the diamonds?”

“Oh, no; Rouge la 

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