“Unhappy man! how could you plot to hurt one who has never harmed you?” exclaimed Reuel.

“Aubrey Livingston was my foster brother, and I could deny him nothing.”

“Aubrey Livingston! Was he the instigator?”

“Yes,” sighed the dying man. “Return home as soon as possible and rescue your wife—your wife, and yet not your wife—for a man may not marry his sister.”

“What!” almost shrieked Reuel. “What!”

“I have said it. Dianthe Lusk is your own sister, the half-sister of Aubrey Livingston, who is your half-brother.”

Reuel stood for a moment, apparently struggling for words to answer the dying man’s assertion, then fell on his knees in a passion of sobs agonizing to witness. “You know then, Jim, that I am Mira’s son?” he said at length.

“I do. Aubrey planned to have Miss Dianthe from the first night he saw her; he got you this chance with the expedition; he kept you from getting anything else to force you to a separation from the girl. He bribed me to accidentally put you out of the way. He killed Miss Molly to have a free road to Dianthe. Go home, Reuel Briggs, and at least rescue the girl from misery. Watch, watch, or he will outwit you yet.” Reuel started in a frenzy of rage to seize the man, but Ai’s hand was on his arm.

“Peace, Ergamenes; he belongs to the ages now.”

One more convulsive gasp, and Jim Titus had gone to atone for the deeds done in the flesh.

With pallid lips and trembling frame, Reuel turned from the dead to the living. As he sat beside his friend, his mind was far away in America looking with brooding eyes into the past and gazing hopelessly into the future. Truly hath the poet said,—

“The evil that men do lives after them.”

And Reuel cursed with a mighty curse the bond that bound him to the white race of his native land.

* * *

One month after the events narrated in the previous chapter, a strange party stood on the deck of the out-going steamer at Alexandria, Egypt—Reuel and Charlie Vance, accompanied by Ai and Abdallah in the guise of servants. Ai had with great difficulty obtained permission of the Council to allow King Ergamenes to return to America. This was finally accomplished by Ai’s being surety for Reuel’s safe return, and so the journey was begun which was to end in the apprehension and punishment of Aubrey Livingston.