He was well armed this time, and carried a goodly store of gold, believing that both were necessary to the success of his mission to old Meg. Suddenly, the sunset light faded out, and the sky grew dark with storm-clouds, while a fast-rising gale began to toss the waves into hurrying foam.
"Ah! a little bit of a storm. I must hasten my steps," he thought, and walked on briskly, but it grew dark ere he reached the cabin, and the sound of voices from the open doorway arrested his steps.
"She is talking to some one. I will wait," he decided, drawing back, and then he heard:
"If we play our cards well, Jack, she will certainly be hanged, and we can manage to claim all the money."
"But what about the other claimant, mom?—the woman you told me of that came here almost fifteen years ago in search of the little Nita, that you hid until she was gone? What if she turns up and unearths the whole plot? She would get all, for old Farnham said she was Juan de Castro's own sister."
"She will never turn up, Jack, for she followed the miser up to Gray Gables, and I believe he murdered her, for she has never been seen since, and there was a man here not many months ago who offered me untold gold if I would tell him aught of the missing woman."
At those portentous words from the old fortune-teller to her son, Donald Kayne reeled backward with a smothered cry of agony.
For almost fifteen years a little spark of hope had glowed faintly in his heart. Surely, surely, he would some day find the woman once so madly loved and so strangely lost out of his life!
Alas! old Meg's revelation to her son had trampled out the last spark of hope. No need of his gold to buy her secret now. It was his for nothing.