"If I could find that cross, I might perhaps think I had some right to it. It is yours, Helen, to be sure, by law, and----"
She interrupted him, as she was sure to do, with a statement that the cross and everything else was for him to dispose of as he thought fit. But he was magnanimous to a degree.
"The cross, Helen, nothing but the cross, if I can find it. I have a thought which may help me to it. 'Three chains east of the east window in south aisle of St. Helen's Church.' Those were the words, I think."
"And Glen measured the distance correctly?"
"Well, what if--it is a mere guess, but a likely one, I presume to think,--what if the chains were Cornish chains? There would be a difference of a good many feet, a difference of which George Glen would be unaware. You see I trust you, Mr. Berkeley. I fancy that I can find that cross upon St. Helen's Island."
"It grows late, Helen," said he, "and I have kept you from your sleep with my gossiping." He turned to me. "But, Mr. Berkeley, you perhaps will join me in a pipe and a glass of rum? My father had a good store of rum, which in those days I despised, but I have learnt the taste for it."
His proposal suited very well with my determination to keep a watch that night over Helen's safety, and I readily agreed.
"You will sleep in your old room, Cullen," she said, "and you, Mr. Berkeley, in the room next to it;" and that arrangement suited me very well. Helen wished us both good-night, and left us together.
We went up into Mayle's cabin and Cullen mixed the rum, which I only sipped. So it was not the rum. I cannot, in fact, remember at all feeling any drowsiness or desire to sleep. I think if I had felt that desire coming over me I should have shaken it off; it would have warned me to keep wide awake. But I was not sensible of it at all; and I remember very vividly the last thing of which I was conscious. That was Cullen Mayle's great silver watch which he held by a ribbon and twirled this way and that as he chatted to me. He spun it with great quickness, so that it flashed in the light of the candle like a mirror, and at once held and tired the eyes. I was conscious of this, I say, and of nothing more until gradually I understood that some one was shaking me by the shoulders and rousing me from sleep. I opened my eyes and saw that it was Helen Mayle who had disturbed me.