"You're just in time, Lord St. Just," said he, his voice clearer and his ideas beginning to gain some coherent shape. "Though that's not the name I should be calling you now, since you're still living in spite of me, and Earl of Jura by all the laws of the land.
"But—where have you come from so late-along? Where have you been since—They hold it against me here to this day that I murdered your lordship; and—there was your body found later on at the foot of the cliffs in front of your hut."
The other sat down by the doorway, with a limp shrug of the shoulders that spoke a weariness beyond words.
"I didn't fall very far, M'Kissock," he answered presently. "And—I thought you must have slipped over too as we fought there—for I saw a body sunk among the rocks in the water below; it was a still day, you remember. But—where were you?"
"I took to my heels through the woods, thinking it would go ill with me when what I believed had happened to you came out; for it was known that I had gone to your hut to seek you, and why." His voice grew very hard, and he shot a glance of unquenchable hatred at his companion. "So I lay hid in the hills till nightfall, and then fled the countryside. I heard afterwards that they had found your body, although it was scarcely more than a rickle of bare bones by then, and of course they put the blame of it all on me without more ado."
The engineer of the Olive Branch who was also the Earl of Jura sighed drearily. The best years of his life had gone to pay the penalty fate had exacted, through that mistake, for a fault he had almost forgotten. And now, desire had failed him; his spirit was utterly broken.
"I was just such another fool as yourself, M'Kissock!" said he in a hopeless tone. "I was afraid they would lay your death at my door, and—I bolted too; without a word to a living soul. I've been afraid ever since, because—I've been told that the police were always looking for me."
M'Kissock's jaw dropped. He looked again at the other's torn uniform.
"Who was it told you that?" he asked, almost in a whisper.
"The Old Man on the Olive Branch. I've been chief engineer on his ship for five or six years, and before that—I shipped as a stoker at first, M'Kissock, at Yedo, in Japan. I was starving there. And I've worked for him all that time like a slave—on the strength of a groundless lie!"