“You are beginning all over again, aren’t you, Jimmie?  And I have told you that to-night I can explain nothing.  And, besides, it is what has brought me here that counts now, and every moment is of—­”

“Yes.  I know,” he interposed; “but, then, at least you will tell me one thing:  Why did you come to-night, instead of sending me a letter as you always have before?”

“Because it is different to-night than it ever was before,” she replied earnestly.  “Because there is something in what has happened that I cannot explain myself; because there is danger, and where I could not see clearly I feared a trap, and so I dared not send what, in a letter, could at best be only vague and incomplete details.  Do you see?”

“Yes,” said Jimmie Dale—­but he was only listening in an abstracted way.  If he could only see that face, so close to his!  He had yearned for that with all his soul for years now!  And she was here, standing beside him, and his hand was upon her arm; and here, in his own den, in his own house, he was listening to another call to arms for the Gray Seal from her own lips!  Honour!  Was he but a poor, quixotic fool!  He had only to step to the desk and switch on the light!  Why should—­he steadied himself with a jerk, and drew away his hand.  She was in his house.  “Go on,” he said tersely.

“Do you know, or did you ever hear of old Luther Doyle?” she asked.

“No,” said Jimmie Dale.

“Do you know a man, then, named Connie Myers?”

Connie Myers!  Who in the Bad Lands did not know Connie Myers, who boasted of the half dozen prison sentences already to his credit?  Yes; he knew Connie Myers!  But, strangely enough, it was not in the Bad Lands or as Larry the Bat that he knew the man, or that the other knew him—­it was as Jimmie Dale.  Connie Myers had introduced himself one night several years ago with a blackjack that had just missed its mark as the man had jumped out from a dark alleyway on the East Side, and he, Jimmie Dale, had thrashed the other to within an inch of his life.  He had reason to know Connie Myers—­and Connie Myers had reason to remember him!

“Yes,” he said, with a grim smile; “I know Connie Myers.”

“And the tenement across the street from where you live as Larry the Bat—­that, of course, you know.”  He leaned toward her wonderingly now.

“Of course!” he ejaculated.  “Naturally!”

“Listen, then, Jimmie!” She was speaking quickly now.  “It is a strange story.  This Luther Doyle was already over fifty, when, some eight or nine years ago, his parents died within a few months of each other, and he inherited somewhere in the neighbourhood of a hundred thousand dollars; but the man, though harmless enough, was mildly insane, half-witted, queer, and the old couple, on account of their son’s mental defects, took care to leave the money securely invested, and so that he could only touch the interest.  During these eight