And how should man or woman escaping get even the moment's grasp of that two-inch projection of stone?

It was, then, a safe room for a prison.

Bad glass refracted grotesquely the white shape behind it, but could not make its movement unfeminine; and, when the lower sash was slowly raised until it jammed about a foot above the sill, and two hands showed their fingers under the frame straining to force it higher, Dick's heart leapt to the belief that they were those pretty, expressive hands he had watched so often in lazy pleasure.

He was upon the point of making a signal above the edge of his cover when a footfall checked him.

A woman, dressed in a blue overall and carrying an empty japanned bucket, was hurrying from the scullery along the grimy track to the coal-shed.

This out-house was so near to the watcher, that he could hear the pretty, eager, flaxen-haired, savage-faced little woman muttering to herself as she scraped and shovelled. He could, after a fashion, speak the Taal, and knew her more distinct phrases for European Dutch.

"Not used to the job," reasoned Dick. "And no skivvy in the house this week." And he remembered the garden hat with the orange band.

Half-way back she set down her load, straightened her back, and glanced at the upper part of the house.

The sight of the partly-opened window and the white figure now drawn back a little into the room seemed to fill her with rage. She ran forward and, standing a few yards from the house, shook her fists furiously, pouring out a stream of abuse and threats of which hardly an articulate word reached Dick's ears. Having come to a climax with a shriek, hoarsely suppressed, she ran back to the bucket and with it stumbled quickly into the house.

Dick was over the wall almost before she was out of sight; but clattering of coal-shovel and fire-grate told him she had not yet started on her way upstairs, and he followed with extreme caution.

The door which stuck out into the yard soon hid him from the open doorway, and enabled him to bring his eyes above the sill of the window, which must be passed to reach the house, without fear of attack from behind.

In the scullery, at the end further from the main building, was a small hobbed grate. By this the woman with the flaxen hair had set her coals, and was now lighting a fire, of which the paper was flaming high and the wood began already to crackle.

In this commonplace task she seemed so unnaturally absorbed that Dick watched her with intense curiosity, his head held horizontally, so that one eye only topped the lower edge of the window-sill, thus making the least possible exposure of his head above it.

Every now and then she would turn and pick out with her fingers little lumps of coal and drop them in the hottest crevices among the sticks; and each time he saw a face of cruelty more determined.

He thought of Amaryllis, and knew that it was of Amaryllis that this little Dutch devil also was thinking.

"Melchard's!" he thought; and knew that for him, Dick Bellamy, she must be, in what was coming, not a woman but a tiger or a bad man.

The fire now glowed under its blaze. She took a shovel and strewed a thin layer of small coal over all. Next she spread a doubled sheet of newspaper on the stone floor, and laid on it small sticks and again small coal.

Several times during this fire-lighting Dick had seen her glance, as she turned, at a small mound of stuff which lay on the further side of the hearth. She now lifted it, holding high, with a finger and thumb pinching each shoulder-strap, a woman's frock—a light, slender slip, of these latter days, to add the last exquisite grace.

The fire flared, and shed its changing light on the green silk, so that by its iridescence of interwoven colours, chasing each other as the garment wavered in the draught, he knew it. Amaryllis had worn it at dinner last night.

Under the light of the big lamp in the hall it had made her figure turn colour like an opal. And again, as she ran with that letter to her bedroom, crimson, purple, peacock blue and a green never the same, had chased each other down the swaying folds of her skirt.

The little Dutchwoman eyed the frock, hating while she admired; then suddenly she pushed a fold of the silk into her mouth, and pulled with hands and tore with teeth until long streamers of silk flickered their reds and greens towards the fire.

At last, with a sound between purring and growling, she bunched the stuff together and pushed it down on the coals, lifted the paper tray of fuel from the floor, laid it in the grate over the silk, turned away, threw off her overall and ran cat-footed into the house and out of his sight.

And with her vanished Dick's last shadow of hesitation.

He crept from behind the door, faced its outer edge, laid a hand from each side on its top, set his right foot on the inside knob of the handle, raised his left to the outer, and thence with a quick movement sprang astride of the top.



CHAPTER XI.

THE WINDOW.

When Amaryllis awoke from a sleep in which the remains of the drug Melchard had given her had happily combated the restlessness of fear, she had no memory of how she came to the room in which she found herself.

Under the shock of the strange surroundings she sprang from the bed, and as her feet touched the floor, last night came back to her.

She tried the door—locked!

She went to the window, and had already raised the lower part until it jammed, when there came running beneath an angry woman, threatening with gesture and unintelligible words.

It was Fridji, who was once Sir Randal's parlour-maid, and last night Melchard's companion in the car.

Amaryllis drew back and looked round the room for her gown—the green silk she had worn at dinner last night. It had been taken from her body before she was laid on the bed. The rest of her clothes she still wore, even to the evening shoes which were hurting her feet. But the green frock was gone—an added precaution, no doubt, against her escape.

Fear thrilled in her heart, and grew so terrible that, if the window had given her any prospect but that foul yard and the dark pine trees behind it, she would have broken its glass and screamed for help.

Almost in despair, she sat trembling on the bed, and thought of her father and of the two Bellamys, and of what they would do, when they caught them, to the men who had stolen Ambrotox and the woman they loved.

All the three? Well, two at least. Yet somehow she felt that it would not be surprising if the worst vengeance should be Limping Dick's.

And inside her she smiled, and the shaking of her body began to subside.

But before her courage was firm in the saddle there came footsteps in the passage—a foot that she knew. The key grated, the door opened, and Melchard entered the room, dressed in a soft, new-looking suit of purplish grey; the jacket too long in the body and too close in the waist, the wide, unstarched cuffs of the mauve shirt turned back—an embryo fashion—over the coat-sleeves.

And with him came the miasma of that nauseating perfume.

The mercy of God sent her anger, and she forgot that she rose before this intruder covered only in white princess petticoat, green silk stockings and high-heeled bronze shoes.

The petticoat was cut low on neck and shoulders, and the white of the lace shoulder-straps showed bluish between the warm cream-colour of neck and of arms. The face, a moment before pale and worn almost to haggardness, was now flushed with the indignation which gave point and edge to the words which overwhelmed for a moment even the shameless and commercialized criminal.

Of what he was, she knew little, but what she thought of him he could not escape hearing.

Yet, when she paused in, rather than concluded her invective, he had already recovered his effrontery.

"My dear Miss Caldegard," he said, "we were compelled last night, for your own good, to exhibit a mild opiate. Your health required it. It has impaired, I fear, your memory of the circumstances which have brought you under my care. When you have had a few weeks in which to benefit by the devoted care and scientific attention which we shall bring to bear on your case, you will learn to look on me as what I am—your medical attendant, and to forget—or—or——" and here he ogled her horribly with his fine eyes—"or remember in a new fashion your old lover."

And with this disgusting phrase he came close up to her.

"Lover still," he said, "though discarded and trampled upon."

Amaryllis could not know that her very truculence was a fan to his flame.

"Go out of my room," she cried, and struck him on his mouth and cheek.

The blow was delivered with the action of a slap, but the fingers were clenched, and the arm was swung from the shoulder.

Melchard seized her by the elbows, cruelty and joy making in his countenance a horrible mixture of emotion.

With his face close to hers, he said:

"Oh, yes, I'll go—soon! That tawny hair of yours, Amaryllis, is splendidly voluptuous against your skin of live, creamy satin. I long to run my fingers into its meshes."

And actually he would have touched it—her hair!—but for a voice which spoke sharply through the partly-open door:

"You're wanted, Alban. Come!"

And Amaryllis, in spite of fear and disgust, almost laughed at the disgust and fear in his face as he released her.

"My men downstairs," he said. "Soon—soon I shall see you again."

Then, at the door, he turned to add: "There are four of them, prompt, even rash fellows—all armed but faithful and devoted to me. I beg you to wait until your breakfast is sent up. Attempts to escape are dangerous."

Again the key was turned, and Amaryllis flung herself on the bed, shaking with rage and horror.

But her attention was distracted from herself by the absence of departing footsteps.

The man must be still at the door—listening, spying through some crevice, perhaps.

No—he was talking—listening—replying, in a voice too low for the words to reach her.

And then an answering voice, which rose by swift crescendo, until it drove the man with hasty steps down the passage, followed by a screaming final curse.

Fridji the parlour-maid was jealous, was angry, and was making her Melchard a scene! Oh, but how funny things would be if they weren't so beastly!

But Dutch Fridji, having no humour, entered the room in the worst temper of a depraved woman.

"You want breakfast?" she said, locking the door and taking out the key.

Amaryllis looked up with disdainful laziness.

"Of course," she said, "please be quick."

"If you cannot wait," replied Fridji, "you must go without."

"You must not speak to me like that. You know very well that parlour-maids say 'ma'am' and are expected to be respectful."

"Parlour-maids! I am no parlour-maid."

"Indeed?" said Amaryllis.

"Here—I am mistress!"

"Oh!" said Amaryllis.

"And you are prisoner—I tell you."

"Yes?" said Amaryllis. "I'm afraid you've let yourself be dragged into a very wicked crime for which you will be severely punished."

"Punish! To punish me! Drag in! But me? Me? Me? I am not dragged. I lead."

"Really?" said Amaryllis.

"The head is mine. I plan. And, because you will never leave this place I do not mind to tell you that it is I have done it. All this. We have the New Drug. I hold the man that shall make it and sell it. I am the leader. I get the key. I catch you by the throat, there in The Manor House, my pretty, red-haired mistress! I catch you while my Melchard, who is clever, prick your arm with the needle. I—I—I!"

"Oh, yes," said Amaryllis. "But I do not think you are wise to tell all this to me."

"Because you tell again? Oh, no, ma'am! I squeeze harder next time—and there are other things. This is good old establish firm, no risk taken."

And Dutch Fridji came slowly towards Amaryllis.

"You make love with my Alban," she said, "an' I stop it." Lifting her skirt, she fetched from a sheath in her stocking a sharp-pointed knife. "I have enough of you. Two months I must say 'ma'am'! And now, it is Alban!"

"You mean to kill me?" asked Amaryllis.

Dutch Fridji was like the nightmare vision of a Fury.

For a moment Amaryllis was paralyzed. But Fridji liked the clatter of her own tongue.

"It is that I mean," she said. "To kill you very slow. Your beautiful frock, it burn now. Soon your shoes, your stockings, your long petticoat, the corset shall burn, till there shall not be a shred they can say was yours. And then the body shall be burned—but first carve and chopped like meat at table."

Amaryllis gasped and shuddered, giving fuel to the blaze, so that it crackled once more into fierce indiscretion.

"I tell you things. Oh, yes, I tell. For the last one that died—it was a pity. He did not know before—knew not ever what was coming to him and to each part of him. That spoil the flavour of my dish, do you see?"

A flourish of the knife put expressive finish to the words.

Amaryllis backed into the corner between bed and door, speaking any word that came. On equal terms she would have fought for life like a cat, but the knife——

"Mr. Melchard doesn't want me to be killed," she said.

For a moment Fridji's rage choked her.

"I'll scream, and he'll come with his men."

"With this I have sent him running from your door," cried Fridji. "It is locked this side, and you will bleed to die before they break it."

Not rushing, but creeping, Dutch Fridji approached.

Amaryllis raised her eyes towards the window and the strip of sky it framed, in silent supplication. And already, half through the window, she saw her answer.

And Fridji saw her victim's face flush with hope, and turned to see its cause.

Through the opening which Amaryllis had left between sill and sash, his hands on the floor, his chin almost touching it, while his legs from knee to feet were still outside the window, she saw Dick Bellamy.

Fridji, with blood in her mind, knife in her hand, and the proof of Amaryllis' face that this was an enemy, sprang to deal with the defenceless intruder.

Amaryllis had seen the lank black hair, no longer sleek, and had received one gleam from the uplifted blue eyes; and now knew terror such as she had not felt even for herself.

Nothing, it seemed, could come between the knife and Dick Bellamy—Dick who had come to her. And then she saw his left arm dart forward—an arm that seemed, on the floor, to shoot out to twice its natural length—and its fingers gripped Fridji's left ankle, jerking it towards him.

The woman fell backwards, and Amaryllis caught her from behind.

"Stop her mouth," said Dick from the floor.

And the girl, her long hands almost meeting round Fridji's slender neck, squeezed with all her strength, forcing the head and shoulders to the ground.

Fridji gaped for breath.

"Stuff her mouth—blanket," said Dick, with his feet almost clear of the window-sill, yet keeping his hold on the ankle.

Amaryllis forced the corner of the coverlet between Fridji's teeth and held it there, keeping up the pressure of the other hand on the throat.

"That's what they did to me," she thought.

Dick stood beside her.

"Change with me," he whispered, and slid his left hand round the front of Dutch Fridji's neck. Amaryllis stood up.

By the hold of his left, Dick raised the woman almost to her feet and, measuring his distance, struck her with his right fist on the left side of the neck directly below the ear—a short, sharp blow, the sound of which affected the watching girl with a pang of physical sickness.

It might have been the noise made by a butcher flinging a slab of raw steak upon his block.

Dick let the woman's body gently back to the floor, and Amaryllis saw that she was unconscious as a corpse.

"Is she dead?" she said softly.

"For five minutes—p'r'aps ten," he answered. "Where's the key?"

Amaryllis picked it up from the floor.

"Melchard said he'd got four men downstairs—armed," she whispered.

"Heard him—but it's the only way—they've fixed that window. Just scraped in head first and we can't get out like that. Come on," said Dick, and put the key in the lock.

"I've—I haven't got—haven't got any clothes." And there was no other expression of shame in her face than the two large tears that gathered slowly in her eyes.

But Dick Bellamy ignored them, looking her up and down like a man considering the harness needed for a horse.

"Take off her skirt," he said; then added: "Shoes might do." And with his back turned to the girl, he knelt and quickly unshod Dutch Fridji while Amaryllis unfastened the waistband of the skirt.

"Yours wouldn't last a mile," said Dick, going to the window and looking out. "Put 'em on quick—say when."

In a time wonderfully short, he thought, for a girl, she spoke.

"I'm ready," said the small voice; and he turned to face a quaint figure in a skirt too short, and too wide on the hips. The brogue shoes would have looked better if the stockings had been of anything but green silk.

But the pathos of sentiment and custom was in the bare arms and the two hands crossed on the chest and throat, with fingers spread in vain attempt to cover the whole; and in the plaintive simplicity of the voice which said:

"But, oh, my neck! I can't possibly get into her blouse, and a blanket's too conspicuous."

Dick stripped off his Norfolk jacket, holding it for her arms. As she hesitated, glancing at him, he frowned.

"Please obey orders," he said, and she meekly slipped on the loose coat. He took from its pocket a folded white handkerchief, and tied it round her neck by two adjacent corners, so that it hung like a child's bib. Amaryllis pulled the collar up over the knot at the back, and began to button the coat over the linen.

"Don't button it," he said, pulling off his necktie. "Cross the edges. Lift your arms."

And he tied the dark green strip round her waist, knotting it in front.

"Come on," he said; and, stooping, picked up Fridji's knife. "Where's the sheath?"

"In her stocking," said Amaryllis.

"Get it," said Dick, and unlocked the door.

Amaryllis behind him whispered: "She moved a little," and brought him the leather sheath.

They stepped silently into the passage. Dick locked the door and pocketed the key.

"Quietly," he said, and as they crept towards the stairhead, he slid the sheathed knife into the pocket of the tweed jacket.



CHAPTER XII.

THE STAIRS.

The passage ended in an arch, beyond which appeared a balustrade.

The corridor was wider than the archway; and Dick, having made the girl hide behind its projection, stepped delicately out upon the square landing, and looked over the rails.

The staircase mounted in a single broad flight from the floor of an entrance hall larger and more pretentious than he had expected. The attempt at an appearance of comfort was a failure, but money had been spent, and a sort of bad harmony between furniture and decoration forced itself upon the eye.

Across the hall, to the left, the front door stood open to the sunlight. In the wall facing him and the stair's foot were two closed doors, and others, doubtless, to match them, beneath the gallery on which he stood.

He had already made up his mind to lead the girl noiselessly down the stair and through the open door, and thence to make, if necessary, a running fight for it, with the chance of taking his pursuers in detail, when he heard a man's steps, accompanied by a faint tinkle of china, coming towards the hall, he judged, along the corridor immediately beneath that which he and Amaryllis had used.

Something, he remembered, had been said of breakfast, to be sent up, and he waited until there appeared, first the tray and then the man that carried it; a thick-set fellow, with heavy boots, shabby clothes, and a bald spot among the rough sandy hair of his crown.

It was plain that he was making for the stair, and Dick drew back behind the projection of the arch, opposite to Amaryllis. He saw the questions in her eyes and knew she could hear the approaching footsteps.

He made a gesture for silence; a silence which seemed to Amaryllis to last immeasurable time, while tea-cup tinkled against milk-jug, ever nearer and nearer.

She saw him take a swift glance through the arch at the comer she could not see, draw back three steps up the passage, and start forward again with a face that made her heart jump, and a terrific limping rush of three or four strides to the stairhead. And she craned forward just in time to see the man with the tray, two steps from the top, receive in his stomach a kick which lifted, it seemed, the wretched creature and all that he carried in a single flight to the bottom of the stair.

After a little clash of plates and cups on the impact of the kick, there was a sensible silence before the appalling crash and thud at the stair's foot. Amaryllis held back a scream, but reeled as if fainting.

Dick caught her by the shoulders and shook her, as women will shake a child.

"Buck up," he said; and she clung to his hands a moment. Then,

"I'm all right," she murmured, and stood alone.

Even as she spoke it seemed that in the hall below three doors opened at once, and that from each rushed a man, clamouring questions; and then, having seen the clutter of tray and crockery, stood aghast.

Dick, after one glimpse of the three so standing, took cover again, drawing the girl with him.

"Looks as if he fell backwards right from the top," said a bass voice, which Dick ascribed to the big man with the black beard who had seemed to carry himself somewhat above the others.

"Slipped 'is foot and pitched backwards, and 'e ain't 'arf copped it."

"But why backwards?" asked Black Beard. And Dick imagined a suspicious glance at the stairhead.

"I guess 'e try save tray and lose balanza of 'eemself," said a third, whose exotic voice and uneasy English affected Dick with an undefined reminiscence.

"Carry the fool to his kennel, you two," said Black Beard. And Dick heard the crushing under foot and the kicking aside of broken china, and a shuffling of two pairs of feet.

But they had not gone many yards with their burden, when he heard a fourth man enter the hall, and a voice in which langour strove in vain against asperity—Melchard's voice, which he had heard for the first time while he clung with his fingers to the window-sill of the bedroom and with his shoe-tips to the string-course below it, sinking his head even below his defenceless knuckles.

At the sound of this voice Dick now stretched himself prone, and wriggled, Amaryllis thought, like some horrid worm, laying his left cheek to the floor until he reached a point where his right eye got its line of sight, between the uprights of the gallery's balustrade, on the four live men and the inert, midway between the door out of sight beneath him, and the place where the broken tea-pot had spilt its contents in an ugly pool near the lowest tread of the stair.

"What's that?" Melchard had said. "Oh, put it down." And they laid the body on the floor.

Melchard looked from Black Beard to the cockney, and back.

"Is it beer again? I said not more than a tumbler of whisky before lunch. Beer always plays hell with him."

"Then you should give 'im 'arshish, sir," said the cockney. "It's the Injin 'emp 'e needs. But 'e ain't smelt beer since we left Millsborough. Somethin's just appeared to 'im, and 'e ain't 'arf copped it."

"Appeared? Tell me what happened," said Melchard, querulously.

"Fell right down the stair, tray and all," said Black Beard, "just as if he'd been pushed."

Melchard was stooping over the scarce breathing body.

"He's not dead," he declared.

"He will be," said Black Beard, "unless you 'phone to Millsborough for a doctor damn quick."

"Don't be a fool, Ockley. Better let him die than bring a sharp-witted medical practitioner to my house, to-day of all days."

"If we have a death here in your house," Ockley retorted, "they'll want to know how and why and when. And 'no doctor called'—and 'this shady Mr. Melchard'—and all the damned things that always happen. Will that be good for your health—with the whole game in your hands, too?"

Melchard was hit, and Dick thought that he saw his face lose colour.

"Well?" he said nervously.

"Either fetch medical aid," replied Ockley, "or bury him under the ash-heap. And that's going a bit far for an accident."

"Was he pushed? I wonder," said Melchard; and the pair, with heads together, spoke in whispers inaudible to Dick, who writhed himself six inches back from the baluster, in fear of the upward glance which might come at any moment.

He had heard enough, and his usual policy came into play.

Amaryllis was able to watch him without exposing herself to the eyes of the enemy; for they had gathered round the injured tray-bearer so near to her side of the hall that the floor of the gallery shut off their view of anything below the top of the arch round whose side she peered, crouching low.

Dick, then, she saw moving snake-wise to the stair; and she marvelled that, even in the hush of the voices below, no slightest sound of his movement reached her ear. Chin first, his head disappeared over the first step, the long body dragging after it, half-inch by half-inch, until all of him that she could see was the thick soles of his boots, clinging, as it appeared, by their toes to the edge of the highest step.

Her heart shook for his danger, which now so closely embraced her own that she forgot its separate significance.

The voices rose again.

"But you're a qualified man yourself," said Melchard. "You'll be responsible."

"Fat lot of good that'll do you," replied Black Beard. "Qualified, by God! When I can't prove it without proving also that I'm off the register, and that my name's not Ockley!" He broke off with an ugly laugh, then added: "Let's go up and see."

And now Amaryllis saw her serpent shoot up to a great rod of vengeance. Before she could ask herself, "What is he going to do?" Dick Bellamy had done it; vaulting, even as he rose, over the rail of the stair, and, with an appalling scream which might have come from a maniac in frenzy, or the mortal agony of a wounded beast, literally falling upon his enemies.

His right foot caught Melchard between jaw and shoulder, shooting him supine and headlong upon the polished floor until his head hit the corner of the stone kerb about the hearth; while the left knee simultaneously struck the cockney, who fell, with Dick's crouching weight full upon him, heavily to the ground; and Amaryllis, fear forgotten, leaning over the rail, heard at the same moment, but as separate sounds, the blow of the under man's head upon the boards and that of Dick's right fist on its left jaw.

Then Dick was on his feet again, but barely in time. For in the clamour and rushing fall of this wild figure, clad in grey flannel trousers and blue shirt, with lank black hair flying stiffly up and away from the savage mouth and blazing blue eyes, Ockley had leapt back out of reach. But the little Spaniard, standing apart, was astonished; his dark eyes showed wide rings of white eyeball, and the open mouth teeth even whiter, as he stared, aghast yet curious, at the living thunderbolt which had fallen so near to him.

Ockley, however, directly his eyes had taken in what he had leapt back from, had begun what even Amaryllis could see was the rush of an expert. He did not, indeed, catch Dick upon his knees, as she had feared, but left him little time to steady himself. She could see that the big man was brave, and as strong as a bull, so that hers looked slender by comparison.

But Dick was less unprepared than he seemed. Arms hanging and face vacuous, he side-stepped smartly to the left, escaping a swinging right aimed at his head, and, as the great body passed, drove a short, heavy left punch under the still raised right arm, which shook Ockley severely and, increasing the impetus of his attack, sent him staggering against the balustrade of the stair.

And now the Spaniard found what he had been looking for.

"Por Dios!" he wailed, "it iss Limping Deek!" and so fled.

Dick followed up his advantage, forcing the pace, but Ockley would have none of it until he had worked himself into the middle of the floor; then suddenly coming again, got home with a tremendous right which Dick failed to stop with anything better than his left cheek-bone.

The blow was well timed and delivered with the full force of a strong man fighting scientifically, perhaps for his life; and Dick Bellamy knew that, hard as he kept himself, he could not afford to take another of its kind.

Crouching, he watched Black Beard between his fists which protected his face, the perpendicular fore-arms guarding his body; and in the moment while his sight was clearing, he heard, from somewhere above him, a little agonized moan, and found himself again.

Ockley, elated, pursued his advantage with a savage left drive which might have proved worse for Dick than the right which had just split his cheek, had he not, ducking to his right in perfect time, met the big man with a heavy left jolt in the mouth, and, simultaneously advancing his right foot and straightening his body, followed it up with a right to the jaw that knocked his opponent full length. He fell and lay beyond the projection of the hearth on the other side of which was Melchard, still as death.



CHAPTER XIII.

THE KNIFE-THROWER.

With the sleeve of his shirt Dick wiped the blood from his cheek, looked down at Ockley, and then up at Amaryllis, half-way down the stair.

"That's four. Where's the fifth?" he asked.

"He ran out there," she answered. "You frightened him."

"Come down," said Dick; and when she reached the floor, she found him kneeling by Melchard, searching his pockets.

She came close and touched him on the shoulder.

"Let's get out of the house—now, now!" she pleaded, lowering her voice in the presence of so much that looked like death.

"Pocket these," said Dick, handing behind him some letters and a pocket-book.

With a sharp tug he disengaged the side-pocket wedged between Melchard's body and the floor, and from it took out a small parcel wrapped in white paper. Of its two seals one had been broken. He peered into the opened end.

"Small bottle—white powder," he said.

"That's it," replied Amaryllis. "Do let's go—please."

"Was there anything else?" he asked.

"Oh, do come away. I'm frightened," said the girl, imploring.

"So'm I—badly," said Dick, and rose to his feet.

The letters from Melchard's pocket were still in her hand. He took them, and picked out a white envelope with no writing on it. The wax seal had been broken.

He drew from it a sheet of paper, and unfolded it before her.

"That's the formula—it must be," said Amaryllis.

"Let's hook it, then," said Dick, buttoning the package and envelope into his hip-pocket, and slipping the rest of Melchard's papers into the side pocket of his own jacket, hanging loosely on Amaryllis.

As they crossed the hall he missed Ockley.

"My God!" he cried. "The black bloke's gone. Did you see him go—or hear him?"

Amaryllis shook her head.

"I thought I'd given him a five-minute dose at least," said Dick on the threshold, and taking her left elbow in his hand, began to run. "We've got to grease like hell. It's a mile and a half to my car."

They were half-way to the pretentious gate, and Amaryllis was already distressed by the pace, when they heard behind them the thud of a revolver. A twig with two leaves, cut from a branch above and beyond them, fell into the road. Dick increased his pace, so that Amaryllis was only kept from falling by his firm hold of her arm.

A second shot hit the drive behind them, spraying their backs with gravel.

"High. Low, to left—jump!" yelled Dick, swinging the girl leftward past his body with a force so sudden that she fell on the grass at the roadside, in the shelter of an artificial knoll covered with shrubs; and this time Dick heard the bullet close on his right.

He threw himself on the grass, sharing her cover.

"All right?" he asked.

Speechless for lack of breath, Amaryllis nodded, trying to smile.

"You can't run to the gate," he said, rather as if speaking to himself than to her. "Wind's gone already, and it's a hundred yards without cover. To the bank of the road's only about twenty-five. Breathe deep. Is my cap in that pocket still?"

Amaryllis found and gave it to him. Dick, unrolling it, rose slowly to his knees, facing the rhododendron bush.

"Oh, don't!" exclaimed the girl.

"Wouldn't, if I'd got a stick. Listen; he's using an Army Webley, I think. Six shots. He's fired three. If I can draw the second three before he fills up, it gives us a start while he reloads."

On his knees, he peered through the bush.

"Still at the door," he said. "Breathe deep. On the third shot we go for the embankment. I'll get you up it. Then over the road. There's timber that side as well as this."

Again Amaryllis nodded, and Dick, rising a little higher, disposed the cap between two clumps of leaves, where he hoped it would seem supported by his head.

"Real G. A. Henty stunt, ain't it?" he said. "But I've shaken him up a bit, and it's worth trying."

He raised the cap slightly, let it drop back again on the rhododendron leaves, and laid himself full length on the ground.

"Third shot—if it comes. Breathe deep," he repeated.

There was a pause, agonizing to the girl; and then it came.

Three shots, thumping in rapid succession, the last of them depositing the cap almost in her hands. Clutching it, she scrambled to her feet, and Dick, catching her by the arm beneath the shoulder, forced her into a thirty yards' sprint, in which, while her heart beat as if it would burst, her feet seemed to touch the ground barely half a dozen times before the grey stones of the embankment rushed to meet them almost in the face.

How he managed to force her to the top and bundle her over the parapet, she could never remember, any more than she could forget Ockley's next shot, which was discharged as their figures showed against his sky-line for the two seconds which it took them to cross the road and fling themselves recklessly down the slope of its other side.

"Brace up," said Dick at the bottom. "You've got some guts, anyhow; and once we're well into that undergrowth, your hairy friend may come after us with a Vickers and be damned to him."

To get to it he had to lift her over a swampy patch in a hollow to a stony place beyond it; whereafter they were soon as well hidden from the road as its outline lay exposed to the search of their eyes.

But Amaryllis at first left the watching to his, closing her own and lying still, in sheer womanly terror of being sick. Somewhere within was a doubt as to whether she did not already adore him, and a pitiable anxiety that "nothing horrid" should be associated in his mind with her person.

Dick, lying at full length, turned his eyes every now and again from his watch on the road to look at the girl's face; and saw, with anxiety as well as pity, how pale it was, and how wasted already by hunger, fear and running—and perhaps by the drug they had given her the night before. He must ask no further exertion of her until she was fed and rested.

His object was to make his way as quickly as possible to "The Coach and Horses," his car, and safety.

But he dared not move from this shelter, nor even stand upright, until he knew what Ockley intended. Already he had tasted the man's quality, and, with the girl on his hands, held him in healthy fear.

"They've gone too far," he reflected, "to back out."

Had Black Beard been playing 'possum when he ought to have been laid out? He must, it would seem, have been pretty fit all the time to get away without making a sound.

Then a thought which sent fear through him like a knife:

"If he saw or heard what we took from that scented swine, no wonder he's shooting to kill. It's God's judgment on me for a fool—a fool that believed in peace and policemen. Limping Dick on a gaff like this without a gun!"

And then he saw a figure, clear against the sky, standing on the road, at the head of the path by which, three-quarters of an hour ago, he himself had gone up to get his first view of "The Myrtles."

It was Ockley; even at three hundred yards Dick could distinguish the black beard and heavy shoulders of the enemy, who was gazing from his high point, not in the direction of the fugitives, but along the moorland path to "The Coach and Horses"—the path which lay open to his eye for its whole length.

"Easy to guess the way I want to go," Dick calculated, "and easier to see that I haven't dared take it." Then, as Ockley turned his head towards the trees, "and easiest of all," he added aloud, "to spot the only cover."

Amaryllis opened her eyes, and he saw that her face was less grey.

"What is it?" she asked.

"The Hairy One," said Dick, "looking for us."

"But he can't see us, can he?"

"No. That's why he knows where we are. He's coming down."

"Don't be worried, Dick," said Amaryllis softly. "You'll get the best of him again. You've been splendid."

"I've been a fool."

"Why?" she asked.

"To be caught without a gun. I could have killed him."

"Would you?"

"It's he or us."

Her answer surprised him. There was no fear in her face, but sympathy filled it; and a little colour came.

"Then you will kill him," she said with assurance. "I'll do whatever you say, and we'll beat him."

Dick nodded. "See those hazels?" he said. "We'll scrounge behind 'em to start with."

By the time they were settled in the new cover they could hear heavy feet in the distance, crashing through the low tangle of undergrowth. And Amaryllis, fear cast out by trust, and her physical prostration for the moment counteracted by the intensity of her interest in him, and by her curiosity to see how next his versatility of resource would show itself, watched Dick's face as he listened to the feet of his enemy. Each step, she thought, had a different shade of meaning for him. His left ear seemed to follow, and his eyes seemed to see each stride of the hunter, and at last he spoke:

"He's working along this side of the embankment. Now he's in the track that cuts through this copse. We're close to it here—see, through there, between the beech and the young oak. Hear his feet: stones, puddle, soft rut," he said rhythmically. "Caught his foot. He's following the path—going slower—walking, and trying to look both sides at once in the undergrowth."

A pause, and then he said, with a jerk:

"Take that coat off."

Amaryllis obeyed, and lay still.

Beside the rutted cart-track, a few yards from where they lay, was a pile of brushwood, cut and stacked for fuel. From this, with a cautious eye and ear on the bend where the track twisted out of sight in the direction of the high road, he took an armful of sticks and twigs and buttoned round it the Norfolk jacket. He tore grass in great handfuls and stuffed the ends of the sleeves, Amaryllis helping eagerly as she seized his purpose.

He next took the Dutchwoman's knife from the dummy's pocket and dragged the rude torso to the side of the woodstack furthest from the expected approach, pushing it out across the track, so that, buttons downward, with left arm extended beyond the head which was not there, the right doubled beneath the breast, and the thrice-perforated cap, with a bunch of grass beneath it, dropped within the bend of the supposed left elbow, and the non-existence of legs concealed by the wood-pile, it might well be mistaken, by one coming down the wheel-track from the road, for a man stricken or sleeping.

Behind them was a small, deep hollow, where the ancient stump of some great tree had rotted.

"Get down there," said Dick. "Don't stand, roll in and curl up."

And the last she saw of him as she obeyed, was the back of the black head and the blue shirt, rising erect some ten yards up the track from the wood-pile, making themselves small behind the largest tree-trunk in sight, and the gently swaying right hand poising in its palm Dutch Fridji's knife.

Then she obeyed orders, curled up in her musty lair, and prayed.

Heavily nearer came the footsteps—walking—walking—walking—until the girl feared she must cry out or faint. She bit through a lump of the handkerchief he had tied round her neck for a stomacher—and then kissed it.

Suddenly came a hoarse voice, foul words uttered in furious exultation, and the feet were running—nearer—nearer—and once more—twice—the thumping note of the big revolver.

Oh! the end was coming. Her breast was squeezed in, and her head bursting. Hardly knowing what she did, she peered over the edge of the beastly, uncovered little grave, just in time to see the black brute, red-faced, in the cart-track; to see the blue arm swing, and a long glitter in the air between them; to hear a horrible sound and see what sent her back into her hole, with hands over eyes to shut out what was already inside.

And then Dick's voice, and his hand helping her out.

Standing up, she looked at him. In his face there was no blood under the brown, but his eyes were more content than she had seen them since just before she opened the letter from Melchard—a hundred years ago.

Her eyes asked him the question she could not put into words, and he nodded.

"You said I should, you know."

"You just had to, Dick," she answered.

He looked at her keenly.

"You're beat," he said. "Food's what you want; but 'The Coach and Horses' over there, where I left my car, is the only place. We must go a bit out of our way to keep out of sight of their damned house."

He went to the dummy to free the coat of its stuffing.

While he bent over, Amaryllis, fascinated yet repelled by what she could just perceive lying in the path, crept towards it—and wished she had not.

She was turning away when her eye was caught by a dull blue gleam from something in the grass beyond the body lying face downward in the deeply rutted track; and there grew in the dazed mind of the girl an impulse to see what it might be.

Averting her eyes from the dead body, she stepped delicately, as if fearing to wake it, to the other side of the way, and picked up the revolver which Ockley had dropped in his fall.

Her heart gave a great pulse of delight. This was a thing which Dick needed, and Dick must have everything he desired.

With an exclamation of pleasure she turned to take it straight to him, forgetting the fearful thing in the road; seeing it but just in time to avoid stumbling.

At her feet was the back of the dead man's head, the face wedged into the wheel-rut, with the beard pushed up between the left cheek and the hardened edge of mud. The channel of the rut, where she could see down into it between ear and shoulder, seemed full of the blood which had dyed the shirt-collar and the shoulder of the coat.

And aimed at her eyes, like an accusing finger, there stuck out from the hairy neck the point of Dutch Fridji's knife.

An absurd sense of guilt, maudlin pity for mere death, and dread of the unknown, crowding in cruel rivalry to destroy her weakened self-control, sent her staggering to Dick over ground which seemed to rise and fall like the sea. For she was keeping hold on common sense by the thought that there was something that Dick wanted—what, she had forgotten—but she had it, and he must have it.

He had seen her bending over Ockley, and went to meet her.

Dimly she saw him, and stretched out her hands, lifting the pistol.

"It's for you," she said; and fainted, falling forward into his arms.



CHAPTER XIV.

PENNY PANSY.

Dick Bellamy lifted the girl and carried her to a spot where he could lay her down with head a little lower than heels; watched her until the colour of the face improved and the breath became more regular; and then made use of her insensibility to pay his last duty to the dead.

Without moving the body, he went through the pockets, finding nothing worth keeping except a few letters and a bunch of keys; for revolver cartridges there were none.

For a moment he regarded the grim dagger point, deciding to leave it where it was.

"If Melchard finds it," he thought, "he'll think it's something to do with his little Dutch trollop."

Returning to Amaryllis, he stood once more looking down at her.

He could not carry her in her present state two miles across the moor in the growing heat, and with only one of their five enemies safely dead, while the four others hung on his flank, cunning and desperate, if able to think and act.

And there was Fridji—she was surely herself again—either screaming or at liberty.

His own stomach, in spite of his few mouthfuls at "The Coach and Horses," reminded him that Amaryllis had not eaten during the last thirteen, or fourteen hours.

A little breeze had arisen, blowing from the south-east, and brought with it to his nostrils the smell of wood-smoke. He looked at the pile of cut wood.

"I ought to have known," he thought; and stooping, raised the girl, still unconscious, tied the jacket by the arms round her neck, and lifting her so that her waist was against his shoulder, set out to windward, following the wheel-tracks.

Ten minutes' steady walking brought him to a bend in the path which showed him the smoke he had been smelling, rising from the brick chimney of a squat stone cottage which, rather than to nestle among the woods, as well-behaved cottages should, seemed to shrink from the ragged timber which surrounded it.

Beside the door, on a battered kitchen chair, sat a woman, reading what Dick took for a newspaper. As he drew nearer she rose, and picked up a tin wash-basin full of corn; and to the "Coop, coop, coop," of her melancholy voice came clucking and scrambling chickens and hens in grand flutter of greed.

Her eyes were on them as she scattered the grain, and Dick could see her clearly enough to wish he had a man to deal with, before the sound of his steps rose above the clamour of the poultry, and the woman looked up.

If he had taken, at that moment, any interest in his own appearance, he would have expected her to scream; for the chicken-feeder raised her eyes to see, limping towards her, clad in muddy boots, torn grey trousers and blue cotton shirt with streaks of drying blood down the left breast, a tall, dark-haired man, carrying a woman hanging across his shoulder.

And on the man's left cheek was a bruised cut, swelled, and clotted over with dried blood, which had run down in a stream, flowing over the jaw and ending at the collar; and all the way the drying rivulet had clung to the dark stubble of a twenty-four hours' beard.

For the rest, sweat, dust, fasting and sleeplessness had made of this a face whose horror was but increased by the alertness of the eyes, which shone with so shocking a blueness that the woman, finding them unlike any eyes which she had seen before, called them to herself, "evil eyes—the eyes of a desperate man."

Being a person of some courage, she managed with an effort to keep her hold of the basin and to scatter the remaining grains among the fowls before addressing her terrific visitor.

"You're trespassin'," she said, with harsh self-possession. And from the grass she picked up her cheap magazine and dropped it into the basin which she had just slapped down on the bench by the door.

On the thin paper cover Dick read The Penny Pansy.

"It is not trespassing, madam," he replied in a voice whose ingratiating quality was devoid of affectation, "—it can't be trespassing for a man in great need to come for help to the nearest house."

"I'm too poor to help the poorest," objected the woman, "and I don't like your luggage, sir." And she wondered why she had sirred a cut-throat looking ruffian such as this.

Dick Bellamy wondered why the woman, in this lonely place, spoke so differently from the landlord of "The Coach and Horses." But he remembered The Penny Pansy, and felt for an opening.

Her gaze reminded him of his blood.

"It is not, madam," he said impressively, "a corpse that I carry; though how long the lady will survive, unless you can furnish us with nourishment and shelter, I dare not conjecture. This blood which you see is my own, spent in her defence."

He sat down on a chopping-block not far from the door, sliding Amaryllis to his knees, and resting her head against his shoulder.

"You can't sit there all day nursing a great, grown girl, like she was a child," said the woman.

"That is indeed true," he replied. "And therefore I beg you to let us rest in your house until the young lady is fit to travel."

"It's easy to talk of travelling," she objected with sour insolence. "But 'tis my belief that, once let the hussy in, I'll never be rid of her."

"My desire to be gone," replied Dick, "by far outweighs any anxiety of yours, my good woman."

"Are you her husband?" asked the woman, impressed, but trying to keep the severity from fading out of her face.

"Not yet," replied Dick, assuming an expression of extreme solemnity. "About us two, madam, hangs a web of mystery. It is a story I should like to confide in you, for there is something in your face which reminds me of my old mother," and he brought a note of pathos into his voice, straight from the pages of "East Lynne," words and tone coming with an ease which surprised him.

"There's naught preventing," said the woman, expectantly.

"Except that the lady needs rest, I want a wash, and we both want food," said Dick. "You just be as kind as you look, and I'll give you a pound for every half-hour we spend in your house, and, if there's time, a romance into the bargain. You know what's stranger than fiction, don't you, mother?"

"The truth, they do say. But I dunno," she answered, doubtfully.

"What has happened to me in the last twenty-four hours," said Dick, "would shame the most exciting serial in the Millsborough Herald."

"'Tis the Courier has the best," interrupted the woman eagerly.

"Mine will knock spots off the Courier—if we have time for it," said Dick, in the tone of dark suggestion.

"Bring her in," said the woman, curiosity prevailing. "I'll do my best for you both;" and Dick, rising with care not to disturb his now sleeping burden, carried it into the cottage.

The little house consisted of a large kitchen and two bedrooms opening from it. The woman, now almost hospitable, opened one of the inner doors.

"My son Tom's room," she said, with some pride. "He's away to Millsborough. Better put the lady in here. 'Tis a better bed than mine, and all clean and tidy for him against he comes on Monday."

She sighed heavily over some thought of her son, and watched her strange guest lay his strange load on the bed.

The idea that under this ill-fitting, already draggled skirt, and loose, ridiculous man's jacket were concealed the fine skin and well-tended person of a lady, filled her with expectation of romance. If the Millsborough Herald had taught her to despise the "low moral tone" of those who ride in carriages and know not hardship, the Penny Pansy, in its own inimitable manner, had compelled her to believe that they possessed a distinction which she could not define.

They were "dainty" in appearance, "delicate" in thought, and "very pale" in love or tragic circumstances.

But this one—if lady indeed she were—was pale with exhaustion, perhaps hunger, as any woman might be; and yet through it all there shone dimly something which reminded her of the romance she had drunk from the shallow and sluggish channel of machine-made fiction.

If this were a heroine, then the queer, persuasive man, bloody and blue-eyed, was the hero—and his kind she knew neither in Penny Pansy's country nor her own.

"Half a dozen eggs, please, laid to-day. I give half a crown apiece for eggs, if I like 'em," said Dick. "Got any brandy, whisky, or gin? And what's your name?"

"Brundage, sir."

"And the name of this place?"

"Monkswood Cottage, near Margetstowe."

"Well, then, Mrs. Brundage—about that brandy?"

"There is a drop of rum—for medicine, so to say," admitted Mrs. Brundage, with a cold simper.

"Good medicine too," he said. "Lady Adelina will take some in the eggs I'm going to beat up for her. For me, get bacon and eggs, tea, and bags of bread and butter. See, she's opening her eyes. I'll leave you to look after her."

Outside the cottage door, he examined the revolver Amaryllis had given him. Of its six cartridges, four had been discharged. But two might make all the difference; and, after all, he had only to get Amaryllis to the car, or the car to Amaryllis.

And as he walked round the cottage, watching the woods, reflection led him more and more to believe that he had shaken himself free of his enemies. All but the Woman and the Dago were more or less damaged; none, it was probable, knew in what direction Ockley had disappeared; fear of the evidence he held against them might now prompt them rather to flight than pursuit; and what, he asked himself, could that yellow-haired she-devil, even if the little Dago that had bolted were faithful to his fellows, do against him now?

Amaryllis should have her rest.

Passing her window, he heard her talking rapidly, her words broken by sobs which pained him, and snatches of laughter which hurt him more.

He met Mrs. Brundage at the door.

"She's feared of me—pushes me away," she whispered. "Highsterical, you may call it. If you're Dick, sir, it's you she wants. I've got her in bed, but I don't promise she'll stay there."

He pushed past her, saw the rum-bottle and the eggs set out on the kitchen table, took a tumbler and spoon from the dresser, and broke the first egg into the glass.

"Sugar," he said, "and milk."

Mrs. Brundage gave him both, with a quickness which pleased him.

"Tell her Dick's coming," he said, and the woman went, leaving the door ajar.

As he beat the eggs to a froth, he could hear her awkward attempts to soothe the girl's distress.

When the mixture was ready, "I'm coming," he called. "Dick's coming to you, sure thing," and took it into the bedroom.

"I think," he said, standing over her, "that you're making rather a fool of yourself."

"I know I am. But I can't stop." Then, sitting up, with tears running down her face, she sobbed out: "Don't you be unkind to me too."

He sat down on the edge of the bed, put an arm round her shaking body, and held the tumbler towards her.

"Drink it up," he said; and the Brundage woman noted how adroitly he avoided the hand that would have pushed away the glass.

"I don't want it. I want you. I'm safe with you."

"It's both or neither. Drink it slowly. I'll stay to the last drop," he said, smiling down at her as she had never seen him smile before.

She obeyed, looking up at him between the mouthfuls, with something like adoration in her eyes.

When only a quarter of the mixture was left in the glass, she spoke:

"You're good to me," she said.

"Of course," he answered, and she laid her head on his shoulder and slept at once.

So for a while he held her; and the watcher saw the strength and judgment with which, a little later, he lowered the head to the pillow so that the change of position never brought a quiver to the closed eyelids; and, feeling romance as never before, she let a man play sick-nurse to a maiden in bed without one censorious thought, and became dimly aware for a moment in her drab life that love and modesty, strength and beauty, safety and trust, spring to meet each other out of the hidden root of things.

Dick laid the coverlet over the girl's shoulders, and walked out of the room with a silence of which the woman achieved only an indifferent imitation.

"And him with that bad limp, too," she said to herself afterwards, "and them thick boots!"

"Breakfast," said Dick, in that low tone of his which never whispered. "Leave her door open, and our voices will make her feel safe in her sleep. Give me a towel and soap. I'll wash at the pump while you make tea."

When he had washed, eaten many eggs and drunk much tea, Mrs. Brundage thought her turn had come.

"Lady Adeline——" she began, but Dick turned on her so sudden a stare that she stopped short. And no less suddenly he remembered.

The woman's softening had made him almost willing to trust her with a condensed version of the facts. But her "Adeline" reminded him that he was already committed to a safer course.

"Adelina," he said, correcting her, "the Lady Adelina, not Adeline. Her mother, you see, Mrs. Brundage, was an Italian lady of high birth, and her exalted family were very particular about the end of the name."

To gain time he finished his tea, and lighted his pipe—his first smoke since he had left St. Albans.

"The father is an Englishman of title, who has long set his heart on a great marriage for his daughter. For months, nay, years, the high-spirited Lady Adelina has resisted the idea of yoking herself with a man she dislikes and for whom she has no respect."

"Poor young lady," sighed Mrs. Brundage. The familiar tale was alive with reality for her. "Now I'll lay the father's a baronet," she said.

"You have great insight, Mrs. Brundage. But it is worse than that: he is a marquis. Well, just before I first met her, Adelina, worn out by her father's alternate cajolery and brutality, had yielded, almost promising to do as he wished. It was during the war——"

"That war!" exclaimed Mrs. Brundage. "It's got a deal to answer for. Now, there's Tom; it's changed his heart from cows and horses to motor-cars and airyplanes."

"It was in a hospital——" said Dick.

"Them hospitals!" she interrupted. "I know 'em. And very dangerous institootions I consider 'em."

"I see you do—so you will understand that part. When we had made the discovery that each was the only thing in the world to the other, and she had told her father, the Marquis of Ontario, that she would wed none but me, his anger was so terrible that I dared no longer leave her beneath his roof. There was nothing for it but——"

"An elopement!" burst from Mrs. Brundage.

Dick nodded.

"We did it—last night, in my car. But about four miles from Millsborough, we had an accident. You've seen my face, Mrs. Brundage, but you haven't seen my car. And we knew that the Marquis was not far behind us. So we dragged ourselves along the ditch into which we had fallen, and hid. At dawn we saw him go tearing by in his sumptuous sixteen-cylinder electric landaulette. After that——"

A crunching of gravel outside brought a not inconvenient interruption to this romance.

Dick was out of the kitchen like a flash, his right hand in the pocket of his jacket.

Mrs. Brundage heard a voice that was not his, and words of a language she had never heard before. Having no reason to fear anything worse than the Marquis of Ontario, she followed her hero with a stride as swift and almost as silent as his own.

Before she reached the corner, she heard his voice in sharp command, answered by a rapid flow of words in a tongue and voice strange to her.

She checked her advance suddenly and noisily, heard a second order jerked out, and showed herself.

"Abajo las manos," Dick had said—just in time, for Pepe el Lagarto's hands hung by his sides once more when Mrs. Brundage came round the corner and caught her first sight of him.

A small, dingy-faced man, with fear in the lines of his mouth, but a pathetic, dog-like trust in his eyes, stood looking up at the stern master who, it seemed, had caught him unawares.

Mrs. Brundage did not like the new-comer, nor the aspect of this meeting.

"Who is this man, Mr.—Mr. Dick?" she asked.

He turned upon her with surprise so well-feigned that she fully believed he had not heard her coming.

"He's my chauffeur, Mrs. Brundage," he said. "He is of Spanish blood, born in the Republic of La Plata. With the skill which is second nature to him he has tracked me to your house—to tell me that my car is already repaired, and that the Earl of Toronto—er—the Marquis of Ontario is sending out party after party to search the whole countryside for us. With your permission, Pepe el Lagarto will remain here until the Lady Adelina is able to proceed, when he will guide us to the place where the car is concealed."

Dick led the way back to the Brundage kitchen, where he made this strange servant sit down, and set before him half a tumbler of rum.

"I hope," he said magnificently, "that you will pardon my listening to a full account of his doings. It is in the interest of the Lady Adelina that I should know everything; and the conclusion of my narrative to you, Mrs. Brundage, must, I regret to say, be postponed."

He turned to Pepe, and spoke in the lazy Spanish of the Argentine.

"And now, you dog," he said, with manner as smooth as his words were harsh, "how dare you come fawning on me, after helping these filthy, misbegotten sons of Satan to kidnap a lady?"

Pepe writhed with discomfort and apprehension, even while his eyes continued to adore his idol over the rim of the glass from which he sipped his rum. And this contradiction in expression interested Mrs. Brundage so much that she went quietly about her work, hoping by hard listening to steal some meaning from the soft words which came pouring out in exculpation.



CHAPTER XV.

THE LIZARD.

Pepe el Lagarto was pleading his innocence of the only thing which he counted sin, and asseverating his devotion to the only being he loved; and this, condensed, is the story to which Mrs. Brundage attached all meanings but the right one.

He had been in THEIR hands, oh! many months. He did what THEY would, so long as they paid him in coca-leaf to chew, a little cocaine when the leaves ran out, and enough food to live by.

THEY could get coca-leaf—but the Lizard could get it from no other. Nothing mattered but the leaves—and Dicco el Cojeante. Five years it was since Pepe had seen him; Pepe had taken to the sea once more to find him, perhaps, in England.

Oh, yes! Last night they had brought in a woman—a lady abducted. He would have put his knife in her, had THEY so bidden him—until he knew that she was El Cojeante's woman. Now, he would knife THEM, any or all, before El Cojeante's woman should lose a hair.

As he knew the sun at his rising, so surely had he known El Cojeante when he had struck his first blow at the doctor that was a black bull. He had run from the house lest El Cojeante should slay Pepe before knowing him.

Hidden as the Lizard they called him hides in winter, he had seen the black doctor in pursuit of El Cojeante escaping with his woman that was clad in Dutch Fridji's skirt and the loose coat of a man. And, since he knew that God and the Saints will take the side of the man whom none can outwit, Pepe crept back to the house.

Here Dick interrupted:

"You left your companero de grillos for fear of the Black Bull!" he exclaimed.

Pepe smiled, shaking his head.

"It was for fear of that which came to el toro erizado," he answered. "Very wise was I, and prudent, for but three minutes since did I see him, and in his throat la navaja de la ramera Holandesa." He made a movement with his hand, and added: "I remembered the days when I and Dicco threw the knife."

He had gone back, he shamelessly continued, to learn how the land lay; for, should they be all dead, as he almost expected, for Pepe there would be pickings.

To find Dicco el Cojeante again, time was plenty, for la senorita con el pelo rojo must set the pace.

In the hall, Melchardo was not yet come back to his sense; that other that had fallen with him—Heberto, the London man—was pouring water on Melchardo's head, while upstairs screamed la Holandesa.

And then came imperious clamour of the telephone. Pepe felt it was angry.

Boldly he pushed past the London man and went to the room of the instrument.

Through the machine spoke one Bayliss, teniente de Melchardo—chief of THOSE in Millsborough, having charge of the tooth-drawing—el negocio dental, that was a cloak to cover great traffic in cocaine, opium and hashish. And Pepe knew this Bayliss for a man, if less subtle, even more prompt and terrible in action than Melchardo himself. But when Pepe answered with a password of Melchard's, Bayliss replied with questions in a stream—what of the venture of yesterday? Had they found the new drug? Were they safe from pursuit?

And it was well for Pepe that this questioning was broken by the hand that tore the instrument from his fingers and pushed him aside. It was Melchardo, the man of sweet odours, weak upon his feet, but strong in his mind.

When Pepe would have sidled away, Melchardo bade him keep close. Driven desperate by his enemies, he must trust what friend was at hand. "Stand by lest I need thee," he had said. "For very soon there will be hell to pay, if I act not now and with vigour."

So Pepe el Lagarto sunned himself in the window, and listened. And he heard Melchardo put the whole cuadrilla de morfinistas under orders to draw a net around the man who had fled with the precious powder of the new drug and the girl who knew too much.

"For I tell you, Senor Dicco," he said, "that it is the web of a spider. He is the great Arana that sits in the midst, to run out and to seize and to devour. It began in the Millsborough and Lowport sleeping-houses of the slant-eyed men of the sea, and spreads every day wider and wider its meshes and stays. Some day the web will cover the great towns and countries of the world, unless——"

"Unless a great Ticodromo come, Pepe. Tell thy tale quickly," said Dick.

Five parties had Melchard sent out from Millsborough; two cars, as if going to the fair and cricket match at Ecclesthorpe, or the races at Timsdale-Horton, each with four men; and three motor-cycles with sidecars, two men apiece. And their five bases, as Pepe showed upon the table with bread-crumbs, were set at Gallowstree Dip, in the hollow half-way between "The Goat in Boots" and Ecclesthorpe; again, hard by the railway-junction of Harthborough; thirdly, at the joining of the Ecclesthorpe parish-road with the highway to London; fourthly, between this and Millsborough, at "The Coach and Horses" Inn; and fifth, by Margetstowe village, where the woodland track from Monkswood Cottage runs into the seaward road over against "The Goat in Boots."

"And so, you are caught," said Pepe, "in a cage, with horse road and rail road beyond the bars."

"And you heard all this, in the talk which Melchard made with his teniente through the telephone?" asked Dick.

"All this," replied Pepe, "is what I tell you, from what I hear, from what I know, and from what I have seen."

"Pepe, I have an automobile of great speed. It is over there at 'The Coach and Horses.' You must take us across the moor, I will creep in and get the car, while you keep the lady hidden. I will drive out, and——"

"It is too late, Dicco. For while Melchardo talked and made commands, there was a sound from above of the breaking of wood and blows of a hammer, and the screaming of the woman was hushed. And before he had come to an end with the ordering, that Dutch Fury, set free by Heberto, springs into the room of the telephone, with blood in her eyes, and half-naked. When she knew what he was about, she asked him in her sharp voice:

"'Have you told him first to find the man's car?'

"'What car? What man?' says Melchardo.

"'The devil that laid me out, and you fools too,' quoth Fridji. 'The man that knew who stole the girl; the man that knew where you'd taken her; the man who had her out of this house three hours after we fetched her in. He came—he must have come in a car, and by the London Road. And he must have left the car near by,' she cried, cursing Melchardo. 'Give me a little writing on a paper, with a signature which none can decipher, saying that the gentleman sends for his car which he left in keeping, when the master of "The Coach and Horses" put him on the way to "The Myrtles." And give me money, so that I pay him more than was promised. If that devil get to his car, he will hang us all. But I will myself drive it half-way hither,' said la Holandesa, 'and send it over the road's edge by the way.'"

And after these things, said Pepe, she went to clothe herself, Melchardo sat him down to write, and Heberto, the London man, was set to cleaning and preparing for the road that automobile in which they had fetched la senorita roja from the south; and him, Pepe, they despatched scouting after Ocklee the Bull, to learn what might have been his luck in dealing with El Cojeante and the girl.

"And behind my teeth," he concluded, "I smiled, knowing well that I went to learn how thou hadst dealt with Ocklee."

"And how, Lagarto marrullero, shall we now deal with ourselves?" asked Dick. "Tell me that."

"Melchardo waits awhile for me and my news," murmured the Lizard thoughtfully, shifting his geographical bread-crumbs. "If I be too long away, he will move without my words to misguide him."

Then he set forth how, since Bayliss had taken his orders, there had elapsed full time for each one of the pickets to reach its post, though perhaps not yet for regular contact to have been established by the patrols betwixt point and point. But the Senorita must be waked at once and take the road with Dicco, moving towards the best, or weakest, bars of the cage; for, though the net was spread, the great spider himself was not yet amove down its spokes and round the felloe.

"Come soon," said Pepe, "and I will set you in the best way, and then back to send the Spider on the worst."

And under his soft, dog's eyes Pepe for the first time showed white, smiling teeth.

"Amigo de grillos," said Dick, in the voice which Pepe knew so well, but had never before heard unsteady, "she has not slept an hour since I thought her mind astray."

Then Pepe, fumbling at an inner pocket, spoke swiftly what wisdom was in him.

"Dicco must get gaiters, rough trousers, and a hat. La senorita must change the Dutchwoman's skirt for whatever this old dame can furnish. When I leave you, feed her always, a little at a time. Talk, make love, make laugh."

"And if the strength fail altogether?" asked Dick, for a moment humble before this wizened wisdom.

"Better the spur and the whip than the wolves should eat the mare," answered Pepe. And he drew a little box from his pocket. "It is the leaves," he said. "They are not evil like the drugs of shops and cities. If she flag and is without strength by the way, let her chew a little, whilst you fill her mind with other thoughts. Then will she endure till Dicco wins."

Dick turned to Mrs. Brundage, and, to her relief, spoke at last in English.

"Madam," he said, "the Marquis and his myrmidons must be hoodwinked. Talking of hoods and winking suggests a sun-bonnet——"

"Silly, old-fashioned things!" said the woman. "But mebbe I have one that I wore whilst Brundage was courtin'."

"And a plain blouse?" Dick continued. "And perhaps a darker skirt——"

"And hair in a plait down her back," cried the woman, greeting with a chuckle her first game of make-believe for many a long year; "your nobleman might pass his daughter twenty times like that, an' never would 'e know 'er."



CHAPTER XVI.

"THE GOAT IN BOOTS."

It was almost noon of Saturday, June the twenty-first, when a party of three halted in the shade of a few stunted hawthorns by the side of the sandy, half-made road which leads from Margetstowe village to the turnpike, which, branching from the main London Road fifteen miles to the south-west, runs north-eastward through Ecclesthorpe-on-the-Moor to the sea at the mouth of the great estuary.

From this tree-clump could be seen, facing the junction of the sandy road with the metalled, the front and the swinging signboard of "The Goat in Boots." And here, that its two more ordinary-looking members might shed the oddity which they owed to the company of the third, the party was to separate.

For in Amaryllis, sleep, Dick's care and Mrs. Brundage's wardrobe had worked transformation. From the dust and mud on the thick little shoes, up over five visible inches of coarse grey stocking to clumsy amplitude of washed-out, pink-striped cotton skirt, and thence by severity of blue-linen blouse to the face lurking in the pale lavender of the quilted sun-bonnet, the eye met nothing which was not proper to the country-girl, dressed a little older, when the tail of hair swung to her body's movement, than her sixteen years required.

If the face was not so ruddy as a moorland girl's should be, and if the mark of the "smutty finger" beneath each eye suggested, out of Ireland, ill health—well, sickness and recovery are not restricted to the town, and the bright eyes, when the lids would lift, gave promise of returning health.

Dick matched her well.

With the cut cheek decently washed, the face shaved with Tom Brundage's worst razor, and a patch of flour congealing the blood of his wound, he looked very different from the ruffian who had disturbed, so short a while since, the lunch of the Brundage chickens. For his brown boots, brushed to the semblance of a shine, brown gaiters of the army cut, green cord riding-breeches which had delighted the heart of Tom Brundage until petrol prevailed over horseflesh and drove him into black; a striped waistcoat, of the old-fashioned waspish, horsey favour, partly buttoned over a grey army shirt and loosely covered by his own Norfolk jacket, with a knotted bandanna in place of collar, made of him an odd, but wholly credible nondescript of the lower sporting world.

Men on the roads of that joyous Saturday might have asked was it whippets, horses, or the ring which best explained this lank, keen-eyed, humorous-lipped, uneven-gaited fellow; but none would have suspected a masquerade in the figure offered to their eyes with an assurance so entirely devoid of self-consciousness.

Yet to Amaryllis it was perhaps the raffish green imitation-velours Homburg hat which did most to alter Dick Bellamy's aspect; so that she would wait for a glance of his eyes to assure herself that this was indeed her wonderful friend and champion, and no new man nor changed spirit.

But Pepe, its one honest and unpretentious person, had made the whole trio bizarre and incredible.

For though, on one word from Dick, Amaryllis had given her credence and trust to the Lizard, she yet felt that he suited so ill with any English surroundings that his incongruity would show up any boggled stitch in their two disguises. So, while she nibbled the biscuit which Dick had taken from the paper in his pocket and ordered her to eat, and listened to the unintelligible valedictory advice which Pepe was ladling out in Spanish, she was longing to be alone with the gentleman who looked so impossible, and free from the company of the man who the very pricking of her thumbs told her was a criminal, in spite of the modest bearing and the uplifted gaze at his idol.

Did she also adore her Limping Dick, as Pepe his Cojeante? Was the one worship antagonistic to the other? Why then—but Amaryllis, like many another woman, was so good a logician that she knew when to halt on the road to an awkward conclusion.

Pepe at last swept off his hat in profound obeisance to "la senorita roja," took Dick's hand with reverence and his generous wad of notes without shame, and hurried back on his road to "The Myrtles."

She looked at Dick's face as his eyes followed the Lizard, and read in it an expression so strange and so mixed, that she turned again to take her own last sight of the man she was glad to be rid of.

Pepe had vanished utterly.

"Yes," said Dick, following her thought, and responsive even to the terms of her recent reflection, "he never would fit an English landscape till it swallowed him."

"'Amigo de grillos'?" said the girl. "Why do you call him that? Amigo must be friend. But grillos?"

"Irons—fetters," said Dick; and taking her by the arm, started in the direction of "The Goat in Boots," walking with a curiously swaggering gait which went far to mask his limp. "Amigos de grillos—fetter-pals. We were chained together for six months."

"In—in prison? Oh, Dick!" she cried, "I knew he was horrid."

"And me?"

"I know you aren't," she replied.

"I'm afraid he is, from your point of view," he replied. "But Pepe el Lagarto has one streak which interests me."

"Tell me," said Amaryllis.

And as they walked slowly towards the inn, he told her of Pepe and his coca-leaves; of the Peruvian Indians' use of them to resist hunger and fatigue; and of how the little man had given his all, which he could not replace, to help la senorita roja over the roughness of her way.

"I had to keep a little in a bit of paper to satisfy him," said Dick.

"Then he's kind to women, at least," said Amaryllis.

"When I met him, he was in for five years—murdering his wife."

"Why?"

"Found her in company he wasn't fond of," said Dick, "so he threw her out of window."

"And the—company?"

"Pepe slit its throat."

Amaryllis shuddered.

"No," resumed Dick, "you won't find any pretty Idylls of the King gadgets about Pepe. He gave you all his coca-leaves because he regarded you as El Cojeante's woman—that's all."

"Do you?" asked Amaryllis, and her colour for the first time matched her head-gear.

"For to-day—of course," he answered. "You're my daughter—and don't you forget it."

Amaryllis, if the word may be used of a sound so pleasant, giggled.

"Well, daddy dear," she replied, "I admit that your friend has a shiny streak running through his horridness. And I like him for worshipping you with his dog's eyes. And I shouldn't wonder if you often find those silver veins in queer places, dad."

She said it like a question but received no response.

"If I've caught on to Pepe's topography," he said, "the road to the right there runs on an easy downward grade for two miles, then dips sharply for another. At the lowest point—they call it Gallowstree Dip—there's another road, to the left, which runs straight to Harthborough Junction—the place we want. But at Gallowstree Dip, says Pepe, we shall find a motor-bike and side-car with two men ready to put our lights out on contact—if there aren't too many witnesses. So when we pass them we've got to be a larger party than two. So we start by going into the bar here, and you're going to swallow bread and cheese and beer, there's a good daughter."

Amaryllis nodded. "But, Dick," she said, "if they aren't at Gallowstree Dip?"

"We've got to make our plans as we go, and change 'em when we must. It'd seem incredible, wouldn't it—if it weren't for what you've seen and suffered since last night. England! And you and I as much cut off from Bobbies and Bow Street as if we were in Petrograd or Central New Guinea. Suppose we could find a village constable in a cottage—they'd kill him as gaily as they would you or me—but it isn't his at-home day, he's at Timsdale-Horton Races. When this gaff's over, the belated soothsayers will tell me: 'you ought to have roused the police and laid your case before them,' in one of the three great towns that I drove through last night. And what yarn was I to pitch? That there might be murder going to be done at a place called 'The Myrtles'? And what time had I to tell it in? And where'd you be now, daughter, if I'd been two minutes later than I was?"

Ever so gently Amaryllis squeezed his arm against her side in gratitude, and then quivered a little, remembering the horror of Dutch Fridji and her knife—and where last she had seen it.

But Dick went on, as if he had noticed nothing, to tell her of the two letters which had barely yet, he supposed, reached Scotland Yard. He had no certainty, indeed, that the second, given to the landlord of "The Coach and Horses," had even been posted. Before nightfall, at the earliest, therefore, no help could be counted upon from the police.

"Either," said Dick, "we must break through the bars of Melchard's cage, or keep hidden inside it. The bosses of this mob, you see, won't give a damn how many of their people get strafed as long as they suppress us, and get back what I've got in my pocket."

They were now not fifty yards from the horse-trough in front of "The Goat in Boots."

A little way from the entrance, drawn up opposite to the stable-yard, stood a long, clumsy wagonette-brake with coats and green-carpet cricket-bags lying about its seats. Two horses were at the pole, seriously bowed over their nose-bags. A swingle-tree hung at the pole's end, and a second pair of reins was fast to the driver's seat, the four cheek-buckles lying crossed over the wheeler's backs.

"Fower-in-hand, and leaders in staable! Sick, likely, or more gradely stuff," said Dick, musing aloud.

Amaryllis, whose eyes were on the signboard, started as if a stranger had spoken at her side. She looked quickly in his face, and found it so altered in expression that she knew the words had come from his lips.

"Oh, Dick!" she whispered. "You're wonderful. But whatever shall I do? If I open my mouth, I shall give us away."

"Howd tha mouth shut, then, 'Minta, lass," he said. Then, lowering his tone, he added in his own language: "I'll account for you. Don't forget your name's Araminta. You've been ill, and the doctor's ordered open-air treatment."

As they reached the threshold, the roar of Millsborough dialect came to them through the windows of the bar-parlour.

Dick pointed to the bench by the door.

"Set there, lass, and Ah'll fetch t' grub," he said aloud. "'Tis bad air for 'ee in tap-room."

As if the world were his, he swung into the bar, where he found two yokels listening to the half-drunken lamentations of a middle-aged, plum-cheeked fellow in a shabby blue livery coatee with shabbier gilt buttons; and even while he was giving his order for a glass of mild, and a bit of bread and cheese on plate for daughter—who'd been main sick, and would likely throw her stomach if she sat in tap-room, for doctor said for her open-air treatment was best medicine—he was listening patiently to the man he guessed to be the driver of the cricketers' brake.

He took the glass and plate and a pat on the shoulder to 'Minta.

"You just make un go doan, lovey," he said. "More eaten, more stomick next time. Eat slow and steady, says Dr. Pape."

Back in the bar, he buried his nose in his tankard.

For the tenth time Plum-face summed up his woes.

"Boy and man, nineteen year Ah've tooled St. Asaph's Eleven to Ecclesthorpe June Fixture. Four-in-'and's historical, like goose to Michaelmas. But to-day, Old Grudgers—ye know Grudger's Bait, far end o' Mill Street? To-day, old Grudge, 'e says, 'You hitch Fancy Blood near-lead,' and I says 'im back, 'If 'ee puts 'er 'long o' Tod Sloan, Fancy'll go dead lame afore "T'Goat in Boots."' And dead lame she stands in staable here, first time six month. Not offerin' lame, mind you, with a peck an' a limp when she keeps 'er mind on 'er wicked meanin', but sore up to the off fore pastern, and the hoof that hot it'd light a lucifer. Fancy's a female, she is, same as your wife or mine; and Tod, 'e just sours 'er blood, and there ye are. Ah tell 'ee, boys, Ned Blossom's shamed, 'e is, if he comes slatherin' into Ecclesthorpe-on-the-Moor wi' two sweatin' wheelers in twentieth year o' the match."

By this time Dick had received from the tapster his second order, a tankard of old ale, laced with a surreptitious noggin of unsweetened gin.

"And what-like nature o' a nag may this Tod be?" he asked, speaking with so easy a familiarity, and holding the pewter so invitingly that Ned Blossom responded as to an old friend.

"Gradely bit o' stuff sure-ly," he replied. "And do love to fill his collar; but sulky-like he's been on t' road this day, wi' Fancy doin' nowt to share."

"Then leave Fancy in staable," said Dick, "and drive owd Tod unicorn into Ecclesthorpe wi' style."

Ned Blossom chuckled foolishly, and took the tankard Dick was offering, handle free, to his fingers.

"Like t' owd flea-bitten mare used to stand bottom o' Church Hill out o' Water Street, waitin' for t' bus comin'. They'd take the bar offen 'er back, hitch it to pole, an' away she'd go, scratchin' and scramblin' up to moor, like cat on roof-tiles. Ha! ha!" laughed Ned, and took a pull from the pewter. "But, say, who be you, standin' drinks like an owd friend?"

"Forgotten Doncaster races, nineteen five, hast tha, Ned? Well, Ah'm pained in my choicest feelin's. Here Ah finds 'ee in misfortune, order the stuff tha needs, pay for it, give 'ee good counsel and call 'ee Ned, and 'tis not till ale's drownin' t' sadness of 'ee where it bides, that 'ee call to mind you've forgotten Sam Bunce."

"Sam'l—ay, Sam'l Ah remembers. 'Twas t' Bunce as came 'ard like. But nineteen five? Challacombe's Leger, that was. Ay, Bunce fits into it. This ale clears the wits wunnerful."

Dick was at the bar, money passing to the tapster.

"There's another, owd cock, where that came from," he said, turning to Blossom. "Mebbe the next pint'll make 'ee call to mind how Challacombe's win cleaned me out—and me bound to get south away to Coventry?"

"Ay," said Ned again, politely remembering all that he was told. "See'd 'ee off by t' train, I did."

"Good old Blossom you be," said Dick, laughing kindly, "sayin' nowt o' the two jimmies you lent to get me home—an' us both that full we forgot all about where I was to send the blunt! But it's not Sam Bunce'll forget what he owes a man, and Ah knew as Ah'd meet 'ee again."

And he pushed three one-pound notes into the fuddled Ned's hand, who saw no reason in denying a friend of this kind.

"'Most gone out o' my head, the money," he muttered. "But Ah knew 'ee meant paying."

Then, as he awkwardly separated the notes, puzzling over the third, "Bit of interest for the waitin'," said Dick. "Put 'em away, while I go and get that Tod Sloan hitched single to lead your pair."

"I'll never drive 'im," objected Ned mournfully. "Ah've been turned all ends up, wi' this 'ere 'appening. Tod, 'e'll turn an' laugh at me."

"'Tis easy, owd man, if you keep 'im canterin' from start."

"Tried 'im tandem once, they did—oh, Gawd!"

"What you needs, owd Ned, is a kip, e'en if 'ee can't sleep. Who's Captain of o' this St. Asaph's cricketin' lot?"

"Rev'runt Mallaby—Dixon Mallaby. Gradely chap. Champion bat 'e be, nobbut 'e's a parson."

"Then I'll drive 'em," said Dick, "and you get a lift o'er to Ecclesthorpe later, an' tool 'em home. 'Long about that time you'll be rested, an' Tod'll be after his oats."

Blossom nodded, lifting his tankard and waving it on the way to his mouth, in feeble farewell.

As he went out Dick glanced sideways at Amaryllis. The sparkle in her eyes stopped him.

"Oh, daddy!" she murmured, "what a liar you are!"

"Cha-ampion!" said Dick, adding, as he left her: "Rubberneck!"

Already the cricketers were gathering about the rear of the brake, amongst them a gentleman.

To him Dick touched his hat.

"T' driver, sir, be o'ercome with near leader fallin' la-ame. He be an owd pal. Seems me tryin' t' buck 'im oop's gone wrong way down. So be you offers no objection, sir, I'll drive 'ee myself. Sam'l Bunce I'm called, and 'tis Ecclesthorpe where us wants to go."

The Reverend Mr. Dixon Mallaby looked him up and down with good-humoured scrutiny.

"I can't object to being pulled out of a hole," he replied. "And I don't think I should enjoy driving Mr. Grudger's cattle myself."

"Then if ye'll bid landlord have Ned Blossom sent on t' Ecclesthorpe when he be sober, I'll get t' three-cornered team hitched up."

And Dick went towards the stable, but turned back.

"Ought t' 'ave said, sir," he explained, "as I'll drive 'ee, so be as there's room for my daughter."

"The pretty girl on the bench there? Why, of course there's room. Does she want to see the match?"

"Doctor's orders she's to take all the fresh air there be, sir, and we're paying for't in shoe-leather. By same token, she looks after me too. Wouldn't let me out 'lone to-day, 'cos yesterday Ah went too free, an' got into a bit o' rough house."

"I see," said the clergyman. "That's a nasty cut on your cheek."

Dick laughed.

"One o' them others got a worse," he answered, and went in search of Tod Sloan.



CHAPTER XVII.

THE UNICORN.

When Sam Bunce returned, he had a straw in one corner of his mouth, and was leading a sturdy roadster, with whom he seemed already on terms of intimacy.

Mr. Dixon Mallaby, meantime, had introduced himself to Amaryllis, getting, for his pains, but the Araminta of the sun-bonnet; and Dick, when he and the ostler had harnessed Tod in his lonely distinction, went round to find her the centre of an admiring group competing, it seemed, for her company in the brake; the girl answering with "Na-ay!" "Na-ay, thank 'ee kindly," and "Thank 'ee, sir, Ah'll ask feyther," with a genuine flush on her face due to fear of speech rather than of men, which did much to heighten her attraction for these kindly labourers and mechanics.

"You be set on box 'long o' me," said Dick, and took her not too gently by the arm.

But his way was barred by a red-faced cricketer in strange flannels.

"'Tis not every Ecclesthorpe fixture," he said, "as we gets a comely wench for maascot. Us be trustin' our hossflesh to you——"