The Lions Skin | Page 9

own wrongs to you, Justin! Consider them; have them ever
present in your mind, together with your mother's blighted life, that you
may not shrink when the hour strikes to punish the evildoer."
He flung himself back in his chair again, and watched the younger man
with brooding eye. Mr. Caryll was plainly moved. He had paled a little,
and he sat now with brows contracted and set teeth.
Sir Richard pushed back his chair and rose, recapitulating. "He is your
mother's destroyer," he said, with a sad sternness. "Is the ruin of that
fair life to go unpunished? Is it, Justin?"
Mr. Caryll's Gallic spirit burst abruptly through its British glaze. He
crushed fist into palm, and swore: "No, by God! It shall not, Sir
Richard!"
Sir Richard held out his hands, and there was a fierce joy in his gloomy
eyes at last. "You'll cross to England with me, Justin?"
But Mr. Caryll's soul fell once more into travail. "Wait!" he cried. "Ah,
wait!" His level glance met Sir Richard's in earnestness and entreaty.
"Answer me the truth upon your soul and conscience: Do you in your
heart believe that it is what my mother would have had me do?"
There was an instant's pause. Then Everard, the fanatic of vengeance,
the man whose mind upon that one subject was become unsound with

excess of brooding, answered with conviction: "As I have a soul to be
saved, Justin, I do believe it. More - I know it. Here!" Trembling hands
took up the old letter from the table and proffered it to Justin. "Here is
her own message to you. Read it again."
And what time the young man's eyes rested upon that fine, pointed
writing, Sir Richard recited aloud the words he knew by heart, the
words that had been ringing in his ears since that day when he had seen
her lowered to rest: "`Never let him learn that Justin exists unless it be
to punish him by the knowledge for his cruel desertion of me.' It is your
mother's voice speaking to you from the grave," the fanatic pursued,
and so infected Justin at last with something of his fanaticism.
The green eyes flashed uncannily, the white young face grew cruelly
sardonic. "You believe it?" he asked, and the eagerness that now
invested his voice showed how it really was with him.
"As I have a soul to be saved," Sir Richard repeated.
"Then gladly will I set my hand to it." Fire stirred through Justin now, a
fire of righteous passion. "An idea - no more than an idea - daunted me.
You have shown me that. I cross to England with you, Sir Richard, and
let my Lord Ostermore look to himself, for my name - I who have no
right to any name - my name is judgment!"
The exaltation fell from him as suddenly as it had mounted. He
dropped into a chair, thoughtful again and slightly ashamed of his
sudden outburst.
Sir Richard Everard watched with an eye of gloomy joy the man whom
he had been at such pains to school in self-control.
Overhead there was a sudden crackle of thunder, sharp and staccato as
a peal of demoniac laughter.
CHAPTER II
AT THE "ADAM AND EVE"

Mr. Caryll, alighted from his traveling chaise in the yard of the "Adam
and Eve," at Maidstone, on a sunny afternoon in May. Landed at Dover
the night before, he had parted company with Sir Richard Everard that
morning. His adoptive father had turned aside toward Rochester, to
discharge his king's business with plotting Bishop Atterbury, what time
Justin was to push on toward town as King James' ambassador to the
Earl of Ostermore, who, advised of his coming, was expecting him.
Here at Maidstone it was Mr. Caryll's intent to dine, resuming his
journey in the cool of the evening, when he hoped to get at least as far
as Farnborough ere he slept.
Landlady, chamberlain, ostler and a posse of underlings hastened to
give welcome to so fine a gentleman, and a private room above-stairs
was placed at his disposal. Before ascending, however, Mr. Caryll
sauntered into the bar for a whetting glass to give him an appetite, and
further for the purpose of bespeaking in detail his dinner with the
hostess. It was one of his traits that he gave the greatest attention to
detail, and held that the man who left the ordering of his edibles to his
servants was no better than an animal who saw no more than
nourishment in food. Nor was the matter one to be settled summarily; it
asked thought and time. So he sipped his Hock, listening to the
landlady's proposals, and amending them where necessary with
suggestions of his own, and what time