Donal, middle-aged, faithful, dour and sagacious, and years away from loch and mountain, gave account.  Horses, weapons, clothing, all correct for Dr. Robert Bonshaw and his servant, riding under high protection from Paris to Dunkirk, where a well-captained merchant-vessel stayed for them in port.  Ian nodded approval.

“I’m indebted, Donal, to my cousin Gordon!”

Donal let a smile come to within a league of the surface.  “Her ainself has a wish to hear the eagle scream over Ben Nevis!”

Rullock’s hand moved over a paper, checking a row of figures.  “Did you manage to get into my old lodging?”

“Aye.  None there.  All dusty and bare.  But the woman who had the key gave me—­since I said I might make a guess where to find you, sir—­these letters.  They came, she said, two weeks ago.”  Donal laid them upon the table.

“Ah!” said Ian, “they must have gotten through before I shut off the old passageway.”  He took them in his hand.  “There’s nothing more now, Donal.  Go out for your dinner.”

The man went.  Ian added another column of figures, then took the letters and with them moved to a window through which streamed the sun of France.  The floor was patched with gold; there was warmth as well as light.  He pushed a chair into it, sat down, and opened first the packet that he knew had come from his uncle.  He broke the seal and read two pages of Mr. Touris in a mood of anger.  There were rumors—.  True it was that Ian had now his own fortune, had it at least until he lost it and his life together in some mad, unlawful business!  But let him not look longer to be heir of Archibald Touris!  Withdraw at once from ill company, political or other, and return to Scotland, or at least to England, or take the consequences!  The letter bore date the first week of December.  It had been long in passing from hand to hand in a troubled, warring world.  Ian Rullock, fathoms deep in the present business, held in a web made by many lines of force, both thick and thin, refolded the paper and made to put it into his pocketbook, then bethinking himself, tore it instead into small pieces and, rising, dropped these into a brazier where burned a little charcoal.  He would carry nothing with his proper name upon it.  Coming back to the chair in the sunshine, he sat for a moment with his eyes upon a gray huddle of roofs visible through the window.  Then he broke the seal and unfolded the letter superscribed in Alexander’s strong writing.

There were hardly six lines.  And they did not tell of how discovery had been made, nor why, nor when.  They said nothing of death nor life—­no word of the Kelpie’s Pool.  They carried, tersely, a direct challenge, the ground Ian Rullock’s conception of friendship, a conception tallying nicely with Alexander Jardine’s idea of a mortal enmity.  Such a fishing-town, known of both, back of such a sea beach in Holland—­such a tavern in this place.  Meet there—­wait there, the one who should reach it first for the other, and—­to give all possible ground to delays of letters, travel, arrangements generally—­in so late a month as April.  “Find me there, or await me there, my one-time friend, henceforth my foe!  I—­or Justice herself above me—­would teach you certain things!”