It was a fair fight, he thought; the odds were not so much against him after all, for his birth was as good as Philip d'Avranche's, his energy was greater, and he was as capable and as clever in his own way.
He walked quickly down the shingle towards the wreck on the other side of the islet.

As he passed the hut where the sick man lay, he heard a querulous voice.

It was not that of the Reverend Lorenzo Dow.
Where had he heard that voice before?
A shiver of fear ran through him.
Every sense and emotion in him was arrested.

His life seemed to reel backward.

Curtain after curtain of the past unfolded.
He hurried to the door of the hut and looked in.
A man with long white hair and straggling grey beard turned to him a haggard face, on which were written suffering, outlawry, and evil.
"Great God--my father!" Ranulph said.
He drew back slowly like a man who gazes upon some horrible fascinating thing, and then turned heavily towards the sea, his face set, his senses paralysed.
"My father not dead! My father--the traitor!" he groaned..