him, and it seemed at the mantelpiece which was just on a level with his eyes.  The mantelpiece, however, had nothing to distinguish it from a score of others.  Its counterpart might be found to this day in the parlour of any inn.  A couple of china figures disfigured it, to be sure, but Mitchelbourne could not bring himself to believe that even their barbaric crudity had power to produce so visible a discomposure.  He inclined to the notion that his companion was struck by a physical disease, perhaps some recrudescence of a malady contracted in those foreign lands of which he vaguely spoke.

“Sir, you are ill,” said Mitchelbourne.  “I will have a doctor, if there is one hereabouts to be found, brought to your relief.”  He sprang up as he spoke, and that action of his roused Lance out of his paralysis.  “Have a care,” he cried almost in a shriek, “Do not move!  For pity, sir, do not move,” and he in his turn rose from his chair.  He rose trembling, and swept the dust off a corner of the mantelpiece into the palm of his hand.  Then he held his palm to the lamp.

“Have you seen the like of this before?” he asked in a low shaking voice.

Mitchelbourne looked over Lance’s shoulder.  The dust was in reality a very fine grain of a greenish tinge.

“Never!” said Mitchelbourne.

“No, nor I,” said Lance, with a sudden cunning look at his companion, and opening his fingers, as he let the grain run between them.  But he could not remove as easily from Mitchelbourne’s memories that picture he had shown him of a shaking and a shaken man.  Mitchelbourne went to bed divided in his feelings between pity for the lady Lance was to marry, and curiosity as to Lance’s apprehensions.  He lay awake for a long time speculating upon that mysterious green seed which could produce so extraordinary a panic, and in the morning his curiosity predominated.  Since, therefore, he had no particular destination he was easily persuaded to ride to Saxmundham with Mr. Lance, who, for his part, was most earnest for a companion.  On the journey Lance gave further evidence of his fears.  He had a trick of looking backwards whenever they came to a corner of the road—­an habitual trick, it seemed, acquired by a continued condition of fear.  When they stopped at midday to eat at an ordinary, he inspected the guests through the chink at the hinges of the door before he would enter the room; and this, too, he did as though it had long been natural to him.  He kept a bridle in his mouth, however; that little pile of grain upon the mantelshelf had somehow warned him into reticence, so that Mitchelbourne, had he not been addicted to his tobacco, would have learnt no more of the business and would have escaped the extraordinary peril which he was subsequently called upon to face.

But he was addicted to his tobacco, and no sooner had he finished his supper that night at Saxmundham than he called for a pipe.  The maidservant fetched a handful from a cupboard and spread them upon the table, and amongst them was one plainly of Barbary manufacture.  It had a straight wooden stem painted with hieroglyphics in red and green and a small reddish bowl of baked earth.  Nine men out of ten would no doubt have overlooked it, but Mitchelbourne was the tenth man.  His fancies were quick to kindle, and taking up the pipe he said in a musing voice: