The Box with Broken Seals by Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips), 1866-1946

"It is the end," was the solemn reply. "Perhaps if you take the ashes away with you, you will be able to consider that honours are divided."

"You burnt them--yourself?" Crawshay muttered, still wondering. "Every gentleman in this room," Denis replied, "is witness of the fact that I destroyed unopened the packet which I brought from America, barely five minutes ago."

Crawshay stood upright once more. He was convinced but puzzled.

"Will you tell me what induced you to do this?" he asked.

"We will tell you presently. As for the submarine outside, well, as you see, he is still sending up blue lights."

Crawshay gathered the ashes together and thrust them into an envelope.

"Your friend will be trying some of our Irish whisky, Denis," Michael Dilwyn invited. "We are hoping to make the brand more popular in England before long."

CHAPTER XXVIII

One by one, the next morning, in all manner of vehicles, the guests left the Castle. Sir Denis bade them farewell, parting with some of them in the leaky hall of his ancestors, and with others out in the stone-flagged courtyard. Crawshay alone lingered, with the obvious air of having something further to say to his host. The two men strolled down together seaward to where the great rocks lay thick upon the stormy beach.

"These," Sir Denis pointed out, "are supposed to be the marbles with which the great giant Cathley used to play. Tradition is a little vague upon the subject, but according to some of the legends he was actually an ancestor, and according to others a kind of patron saint.... Just look at my house, Crawshay! What would you do with a place like that?"

They turned and faced its crumbling front, majestic in places, squalid in others, one whole wing open to the rain and winds, one great turret still as solid and strong as the rocks themselves.

"It would depend very much," Crawshay replied, "upon the extremely sordid question of how much money I had to spend. If I had enough, I should certainly restore it. It's a wonderful situation."

The eyes of its owner glowed as he swept the outline of the storm-battered country and passed on to the rich strip of walled-in fields above.

"It is my home," he said simply. "I shall live in no other place. If this matter which we discussed last night should indeed prove to have a solid foundation, if this even should be the beginning of the end of the great struggle--"

"But it is," Crawshay interrupted. "How can you doubt it if you have read the papers during the last six months?"

"I have scarcely glanced at an English newspaper for ten years," was his companion's reply. "I fled to America, hating England as a man might do some poisonous reptile, sternly determined never to set foot upon her shores again. I left without hope. It seemed to me that she was implacable. The war has changed many things."