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She sat in all the self-assurance of unruffled prettiness. The sharp toes of her small feet were crossed. She leaned with chin to fingers, elbow on the chair-arm, and she seemed amused.

She was someone he had never seen, he was sure of that; but everything about her made him feel that he ought to remember something of her—everything except the strange perfume that came as if in invisible smoke-like weavings; for a moment it could be detected by a delicate sting, then was gone.

Presently she sat up, her head half turned, alert, listening.

McGuire sagged more heavily against the table, watching the door. He knew the footfall out there; it was not at all stealthy, yet like the soft, firm pad of a jungle animal.

The door opened. Williams appeared. Whatever his age may have been, nothing of youth was left. A short beard, always cropped, but usually by being hacked away unevenly, curled down his cheeks. A glint of the Saxon colour was there, a hint at blondness, but a slight, obscure hint. Even his hair was sunburned. His eyes had the impact that madness gives, and were deep-set and narrowed from much staring into sun and wind. They widened with menace if anything challenging appeared. Tales of brutal work were told of him; and at times he showed an inflexible justice. Once he had been hanged; in McGuire's words, "He gave himself to a woman, and she sewed him on to a hangman's rope—for a tassel!" So it was said, but no one seemed really to know.