Fate had played with him strangely.

It had linked him with happenings that were inexplicable and unusual, and he believed that they were not without their meaning for him.

More or less of a fatalist, he was inspired by the sudden and disturbing thought that they had happened by inevitable necessity.
Vividly he saw again the dark, haunting eyes of the woman in the coach, and heard again the few low, tense words with which she had revealed to him her quest of a man--a man by the name of Michael O'Doone.

In her presence he had felt the nearness of tragedy.

It had stirred him deeply, almost as deeply as the picture she had left in her seat--the picture hidden now against his breast--like a thing which must not be betrayed, and which a strange and compelling instinct had made him associate in such a startling way with Tavish.