Did he know it? or was the news
now being brought by this messenger whom he, Hurlstone, had supplanted?
If so, when and how had Perkins received the intelligence that brought
him to Todos Santos? The young man could scarcely repress a bitter smile
as he remembered the accepted idea of Todos Santos' inviolability--that
inaccessible port that had within six weeks secretly summoned Perkins
to its assistance! And it was there he believed himself secure!
What security had he at all? Might not this strange, unimpassioned,
omniscient man already know HIS secret as he had known the others'?
The interview of Perkins with the messenger in the next cabin was a long
one, and apparently a stormy one on the part of the newcomer. Hurlstone
could hear his excited foreign voice, shrill with the small vehemence of
a shallow character; but there was no change in the slow, measured tones
of the Senor. He listlessly began to turn over the papers on the table.
Presently he paused. He had taken up a sheet of paper on which Senor
Perkins had evidently been essaying some composition in verse. It seemed
to have been of a lugubrious character. The titular line at the top
of the page, "Dirge," had been crossed out for the substituted "In
Memoriam.
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