The gray flags were bare except where the Carbineer's body lay. With a little gesture of compassion, Aylmer straightened the stiffening limbs, and covered the stern, unfaltering face with the dead man's handkerchief. And then they passed on, to confront the hill of rubble which closed the cloister's end. And here they halted, as they looked down.
Claire shuddered.
A gray sleeve emerged from the stones and an open hand seemed to appeal for the help which came all too late. Aylmer dragged fiercely at the ruined wall. A block or two became unseated. These shouldered out others to rumble at their feet.
A gray-clad body became exposed. They looked at it, instinct preparing them to recognize what they saw. Battered and disfigured though it was, they knew it for Miller's face.
For a moment they kept silence, looking at it fixedly. The eyes were open, but death had wiped out from them the imperturbability which they had held through life. Fear had gripped the gray man at the last. Horror had been with him—even panic.
Aylmer leaned down and covered the fear-haunted eyes.
"He has gone, and taken his mystery with him," he said. "What his life was we shall never ascertain. What led him to betray us? That is beyond our learning. It may have been no more than fear and the desire to save himself. I think there was something behind it all that has escaped us, but"—he shrugged his shoulders as he looked about him—"what does it matter now?"
He held the lantern at arm's length as he spoke, and looked searchingly round. The gray stone ringed them in relentlessly. Was there any expedient in which they could find a challenge to the arbitrary decree of Fate? He saw none.
The girl at his side watched him. And then her eyes met his. And as he spoke his voice was strangely gentle.
"God interfered between Landon and his evil purpose, as you said He would. Perhaps, who knows, He may have other mercies reserved for us. But in any case we must teach each other to be strong."