Geoffrey Engleheart, although gallantly assisting in the fight outside Leatherhead, and subsequently showing conspicuous bravery during the Battle of Caterham, fortunately escaped with nothing more severe than a bullet wound in the arm. During the searching private inquiry held at the Foreign Office after peace was restored, he explained the whole of the circumstances, and was severely reprimanded for his indiscretion; but as no suspicion of von Beilstein's real motive had been aroused prior to the Declaration of War, and as it was proved that Geoffrey was entirely innocent of any complicity in the affair, he was, at the urgent request of Lord Stanbury, allowed to resume his duties. Shortly afterwards he was married to Violet Vayne, and Sir Joseph, having recovered those of his ships that had been seized by the Russian Government, was thereby enabled to give his daughter a handsome dowry.
The young French clerk who had been engaged at the Admiralty, and who had committed murder for gold, escaped to Spain, and, after being hunted by English and Spanish detectives for many weeks, he became apparently overwhelmed by remorse. Not daring to show himself by day, nor to claim the money that had been promised him, he had tramped on through the snow from village to village in the unfrequented valleys of Lerida, while his description was being circulated throughout the Continent. Cold, weary, and hungry, he one night entered the Posada de las Pijorras at the little town of Oliana, at the foot of the Sierra del Cadi. Calling for wine, he took up a dirty crumpled copy of the Madrid Globo, three days old. A paragraph, headed "The Missing Spy," caught his eyes, and, reading eagerly, he found to his dismay that the police were aware that he had been in Huesca a week before, and were now using bloodhounds to track him!
The paper fell from his nerveless grasp. The wine at his elbow he swallowed at one gulp, and, tossing down his last real upon the table, he rose and stumbled away blindly into the darkness.
When the wintry dawn spread in that silent, distant valley, it showed a corpse lying in the snow with face upturned. In the white wrinkled brow was a small dark-blue hole from which blood had oozed over the pallid cheek, leaving an ugly stain. The staring eyes were wide open, with a look of unutterable horror in them, and beside the thin clenched hand lay a revolver, one chamber of which had been discharged!
The dreary gloom of winter passed, and there dawned a new era of prosperity for England.
Dark days were succeeded by a period of happiness and rejoicing, and Britannia, grasping her trident again, seated herself on her shield beside the sea, Ruler of the Waves, Queen of Nations, and Empress of the World.
THE END.
MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
Ready shortly, price 6s.
Demy 8vo, handsomely bound in cloth gilt.