"Let us assume, Van Diest, that we are neither of us honourable men."

Van Diest took quite a long time lighting a cigarette before replying.

"You don't mind if I smoke?"

"It's an admirable sedative for conscience and nerves alike. Wouldn't you prefer a cigar of Barraclough's?"

"Ach! it wass of this young man I wass about to speak."

"I had almost guessed it," said Mr. Torrington, and picking up the patience cards began to lay them out in little packs.

"It is said he iss on the road tonight—wass seen by a man who hass done some works for me."

"Indeed! That must have surprised you very much. After cherishing the belief that he was snugly accommodated at Laurence's house."

Van Diest acknowledged this thrust gracefully.

"A clever idea thiss substitute—a nice fellow too—vonderful determination."

"Hm! Careless of you to lose him."

"Mislay, my friend. I do not know thiss verb to lose."

"So you come to me for instruction? Ah well, it's never too late to learn."

For the first time Van Diest scowled, but quickly controlled his features and waved a hand over the cards.

"You tell your fortune, eh?"

"Dear me, no! I can wait for that to develop. A mere game of patience, nothing more."

"There are times, Mr. Torrington, when action is of more value than patience."

"I treasure your opinion," came the smiling rejoinder. "What was it you were saying? A man of yours saw Barraclough? Was that all he did?"

"Not a very smart man that."

"But you've others—smarter?"

"Mus' not let ourselves be beat, y'know."

"So galling isn't it?"

"I haf no experience," retorted Van Diest, and rising crossed to a canary cage in the window where, to Mr. Torrington's silent indignation, he spent quite a long while whistling and saying "Sweet sweet" to the little inmate.

"But what if you are beaten already, Van Diest? Anthony Barraclough is on his way home presumably with the concession in his pocket."

"But he hass not yet arrifed, eh? Dicky, eh? Oh, this poor little one he will miss his master. So the poor—the poor—Sweet! Sweet!"

Mr. Torrington frowned and placing a piece of sugar from the saucer of his coffee cup in a spoon held it out at arm's length.

"Present this sugar to your feathered friend with my compliments," said he. "And ask him to excuse you for a moment."

Hugo Van Diest returned to the table wreathed in smiles.

"So you wish to talk. Proceed."

"If Barraclough has the concession what have you to gain?" The banter had died out of the old man's voice.

"There wass millions of concessions never taken up. S'pose thiss one is lost, eh? Who will be the wiser?"

"I see. Dog in the Manger?"

"We lock the stable door before the horse arrife that is all."

"And how far have you decided to go—all the way?"

Van Diest appeared to deliberate before answering.

"Accidents, you know, they will happen. These boys wass ver' reckless. With all these motors and trains life is risky, the streets too, are dangerous. You never know with these boys." He stopped as Hilbert Torrington drew the telephone toward him. "What are you going to do?"

"Ring up the Police, my friend. You will be charged with conspiracy and intent to murder."

Van Diest's little eyes glittered threateningly. "By the time the Police arrife it will be too late," said he. "Put down that telephone. I wass not so easily frightened." His voice pitched up and seemed suddenly to catch fire. He rose to his feet and beat the table with both hands. "You fool, thiss wass business, business, business, the meaning, the motive of my whole life, and if you think I give way at the threat of a rope you don't know Hugo Van Diest. My heart, my whole soul, I haf invest in this enterprise and I don't leave it. I don't move one inch till I haf what I want."

"Money?" thundered Mr. Torrington.

"Pounds, my friend, shillings and pence."

"And men's lives." There was a fine scorn in the old man's tone. "Money! I hate the name of it. It turns the honour and cleanliness of men into trashy circles of metal. To business then. What chance has Barraclough of winning through?"

"Very small."

"Go on!"

"If you want that thiss radium company shall be floated you would haf the better chance if——"

"Well?"

"You gif to us one-third interest."

"And that represents his chances?"

Van Diest nodded unpleasantly.

"But you will understand of course, that there iss not a lot of time to lose."

"In a word you are prepared to call off your dogs for a matter of millions."

"So!"

The bedroom door was flung open and Isabel burst excitedly into the room.

"There are some horrible men watching the back of the flats," she cried. "Are they ours?"

"Perhaps you would like to answer this young lady?" asked Mr. Torrington.

But Van Diest only shrugged his shoulders. Isabel ran to the window.

"And there—down there," she pointed to the street below, "there are more. What does it mean?"

The sound of her cries brought the others hurrying into the room.

"What is it now?" demanded Cassis.

But Hilbert Torrington was at the telephone. What he actually said sounded incomprehensible, but what it actually meant to the man who received it was an order to despatch a dozen men immediately to the doors of the flats and distribute a sprinkling over the neighbouring streets. There might be a fight, there probably would. If Barraclough were seen a body guard was to be formed at once.

Isabel was repeating her question at the window.

"Those men! Who are they? What does it mean?"

It was Cranbourne who had the honesty to reply.

"Danger!"



CHAPTER 33.

A SMASH UP.

Flora's handling of the old Panhard was beyond praise. Accurate, well judged and with just enough dash of risk at cross roads or in traffic to steal an extra mile or two on the average speed per hour. The night had chilled and Anthony Barraclough, wrapped in his mother's cloak watched the girl beside him with a queer mixture of admiration and impatience. Admiration for her faultless nerve and impatience that the car for all its ancient virtue in no sense could be termed a speed-monger. Flora's attitude amused him too, it was so tremendously intense, so devoted to duty and withal so exactingly efficient. There is no particular reason why it should be so, but it always tickles the male sense of humour to watch a woman do a man's job as capably as a man himself could do it. Her conduct when they punctured on the long stretch between Wimbourne and Ringwood had been exemplary. She jacked up, changed wheels and was away again in the shortest possible time. True a little over a quarter of an hour was lost, but the locking ring had rusted in its thread, as sometimes happens, and it was heavy work for a girl to shift it unaided. She had forbidden Barraclough to help and had made him picket a hundred yards down the road in case the pursuers should come up unexpectedly.

After that all had gone well—except for a plug sooting on number three cylinder and a halt for petrol about fifty miles outside London. A full moon had risen with sundown which lit the countryside brightly, and made the run almost as easy as by day.

Only once did Barraclough see the pursuing Ford, two spots of light visible from the top of the rise threading through the valley five miles to the rear. Of course, it might have been any other car, but a kind of second sense convinced him that this was not the case. He did not confide to Flora what he had seen, but the tapping of his foot on the floor-board gave her the information as surely as any spoken word.

She startled him not a little by rapping out the enquiry:

"How much lead have we got."

"Five miles."

"We shall do it. They won't average more than twenty-eight and we're good for that. Where are we now?"

"Hogs-back."

"What's time?"

"'Bout ten to eleven."

"Hm! Think they'll shove any obstacles in the way?"

"Depends," said Anthony. "If they sent a message through it's pretty certain we may run into a hold up."

"Going to chance it?"

"No. We'll slip off the main road at Cobham and trickle in through the byes."

"Right oh! tell me when."

For some miles they drove in silence and once again between Ripley and Guildford had a glimpse of the following lights. With a considerable shock Barraclough realised that the distance separating the two cars had greatly diminished. But hereabouts an unexpected piece of luck favoured them. At a point where the road narrowed between hedges a farm gate was thrown open and a flock of sheep was driven out into the highway. Flora contrived to dash past before the leaders of the flock came through the gate. Another second and she would have been too late. Glancing back Anthony observed that the entire road was solid with sheep, a compact mass that moved neither forward nor backward.

"Our friends'll lose five minutes penetrating that," he announced gleefully.

It did not occur to him until later that every one of those woolly ewes was an unknowing servant of Hugo van Diest and that their presence in the road was the direct result of a wire dispatched to a quiet little man named Phillips who had been given the task of making the way into London difficult. Mr. Phillips had not had very much time, but he had done his best. A series of telegraph poles had been cut down outside Staines, Slough, and at various points along the Portsmouth road. A huge furniture van with its wheels off obstructed the narrows at Brentford, and in one or two places wires had been drawn across the King's highway.

It was the side turning at Cobham saved them running into one of these obstacles by a narrow margin of scarcely a hundred yards. Also it was the side turning, bumpy narrow and twisted that proved their undoing.

An upward climb, a perilously fast descent, a corner taken a trifle too fine, a sharp flint, a burst front tyre, and at a point where two roads crossed the veteran car almost somersaulted into a ditch, wrecked beyond hope of repair. They were doing forty when it happened and it was a miracle they escaped with their lives.

Flora was first to scramble over the tilted side and survey the ruins of their hopes. Anthony still wrapped in his mother's cloak followed and shook his head over the extent of the damage.

"You hurt?" he asked.

"No. Are you?"

"I'm all right. What happened?"

"Front tyre. Wheel fairly kicked out of my hand."

"It's damn bad luck," said Anthony.

"Brutal." She bent over and switched off her lights. "What are we going to do?"

He looked at a sign-post, knocked crooked by the car when it plunged off the metal into the ditch.

"This road leads from Oxshott—London that way. With any luck we might get a lift."

"Late for anything to be about." She looked back along the way they had come. The road could be seen threading its way among pines for a couple of miles or more. "We shall know they're coming five minutes before they can get here. Still I suppose you won't wait for them."

"No fear. Couldn't put up much of a fight with this hand."

"Pigs," said Flora. "I'd like to kill them."

"Both sides are pretty lethal. Wouldn't fancy my chances if——"

"You think they'd——"

"Course they would. Why in blazes doesn't something roll up? Bet your life if they can't get the concession for themselves they'll take precious good care no one else shall profit by it." He paced up and down looking this way and that. "It was like my infernal conceit bringing the thing through myself. Anyone but an idiot would have registered it from Cherbourg. Almost wish we'd stuck to the main road. There'd have been some traffic there. Damn all motorists who're in bed tonight."

Very faintly through the thin night air came the throb of an engine.

Flora clutched his arm.

"D'you hear?"

"They're coming."

"That's no Ford," she said. "It's coming from over there." And she pointed toward Oxshott.

"You're right," said Anthony. "Got your gun—give it to me."

"What for?"

"Because that car is going to stop whether it wants to or not."

Flora clapped her hands ecstatically.

"Oh, let me hold 'em up," she pleaded.

"No fear. You've risked enough already. Run round the bend and meet 'em. If they won't pull up for you they will for me."

He took the pistol from Flora and planted himself squarely in the middle of the road.

"Off you go." And she went.

Through the darkness ahead came patterns of light making black lace of the twigs and branches. He heard Flora cry "Stop—stop," and the squawk of a Claxon horn. But still the car came on. It swung round the curve and made directly for him, flooding him in light from the heads.

It wanted some nerve to stand there, but nerve was a quality possessed by Anthony Barraclough. He never moved an inch and in his left hand held the pistol levelled at the approaching car.

"I'll fire," he cried.

He saw the driver snatch at his brakes, the steel studs tore up the surface of the road as the car, a small two-seater, came to a standstill within a foot of where he stood.

Then happened an amazing thing. A woman sprang out and ran toward him crying:

"Anthony—you!"

His eyes were dazzled by the head lights, but his memory for voices was not dulled. He leapt back a clear five feet and presented the pistol full in her face.

"I know you," he said. "You're Auriole Craven. But if you or any of that damn crowd try to stop me——"

"No, no, no," she cried. "I'm with you—not against. What on earth are you doing here?"

"Doing? I'd almost done it. Smashed up in the final sprint. I want a seat in your car. Must get to London tonight."

"To London. No. It wouldn't be safe—it wouldn't be fair."

"Fair! You don't understand—don't realise—there are millions of pounds at stake."

"I don't care if there are hundreds of millions," she retorted. "The car is only a two-seater and slow at that. There are two of us already and——"

He interrupted her impatiently, with an order to chuck out her passenger—minor considerations had no weight with him—everything, everybody must be sacrificed to the need of the moment.

"Minor considerations?" said Auriole bitterly. "You speak as if you'd carried the game alone, as far as it has gone. But it was my passenger—the man you want to chuck out—who made it possible. The man who was tortured while you were free to——"

She did not finish the sentence for even as she spoke Richard Frencham Altar stepped shakily from the car and came toward them. The extraordinary resemblance between the two men wrung a cry of amazement from Flora.

"Barraclough?" said Richard rocking on his heels. "Pretty extraordinary meeting like this on the finishing straight. How goes?"

"Good God, man!" said Anthony. "They put you through it."

"That's all right," said Richard. "Never mind paying a price if you win the game."

"Get back into the car," Auriole pleaded. "You'll be caught again."

But he put her aside.

"Wait a bit—wait a bit. Looks as if my job isn't finished yet. What's the trouble here?" and he nodded at the wrecked car.

It was Flora who poured out the story of the chase and ultimate smash and at the very moment of explanation the lights of Harrison Smith's Ford flashed for a moment upon the sky line to reappear a second later creeping down the avenue of trees on the hillside.

"Look, look," she cried.

To Anthony Barraclough it was a novel experience to act on another man's orders. In that instant of gathering danger Richard Frencham Altar became captain of the situation. He literally flung Anthony into the car and refused to listen to Auriole's protests.

"We're players of a game, aren't we?" he said, "and we're going to play it to a finish. I think, too, it 'ud do me good to have one clean smack at 'em before I'm through."

He hardly knew how it came about that he and Auriole kissed one another—somehow they found time for that and as the car moved away she leant out to say:

"You dear brave wonderful Sportsman."

Then he and Flora were alone in the road watching the red rear lamp disappear into the night.

"You've got some pluck," said Flora. As she helped him into the cloak that Anthony had thrown aside. "Going to wait and hold 'em up?"

"May as well. That little two seater would never have carried four. Got a gun by any chance?"

"No, he had mine. Didn't he give it to you?"

"He did not, so that's that. You better make for those trees."

"If you think I'm going to desert," began Flora stoutly.

"You're going to obey orders, my dear. Go on—push off."

There was a quality in his voice that compelled obedience.

"Oh, I hate you," said Flora. "Please, please let me stay."

But he was inexorable.

"They'll be here in a minute. Go!" he ordered.

And to hide her tears of rage and mortification Flora went.

Richard glanced over her shoulder at the oncoming lights.

"Pity about that pistol," he muttered.

On the road at his feet lay a lady's hand-bag with silk cords. It was part of the equipment furnished by Mrs. Barraclough. Richard stooped and picked it up. There was a barrel of tar and a sand heap by the sign board and it struck him that both might by useful. With all the speed he could command he rolled the tar barrel up the road and left it blocking the way. Then he returned to the sand heap and filled the hand-bag very full and tightened the strings. It felt quite business like as he spun it in the air.

The noise of the oncoming Ford was now plainly detectable, but with it was another sound, a sound that caused him to throw up his head and listen. From the Oxshott road it came, the tump—tump—tump of a single cylinder motor cycle engine. He knew that music very well, had heard it a score of times during his three weeks' imprisonment. The particular ring of the exhaust could not be mistaken.

"That's Laurence's bike for a thousand pounds," he exclaimed and quickly pulled the hood of the cloak over his head.

To guess at the relative distances, the motor cycle should arrive half a minute before the car and banking on the chance, Richard sat down on the heap of sand and waited.

It was Laurence right enough—in evening dress, and hatless, just as he had sprung to the pursuit after at last they succeeded in breaking down the door.

He saw the wrecked motor and what was apparently an old woman huddled at the roadside. He pulled up within a couple of yards and shouted at her.

"Hi! you Madam! seen a car with a man and a girl in it go by?"

But he received no answer even when he shouted the question a second time. The old lady seemed painfully deaf and employing the most regrettable language, Oliver Laurence descended from his mount, leant it against the fence and came nearer to yell his inquiry into her ear. He did not have time to recover from his surprise, when the voice of Richard Frencham Altar replied: "Yes, I have." The sand-bag descended on the top of his head directed by a full arm swing. A dazzling procession of stars floated before his eyes as though he were plunged into the very heart of the milky-way—flashed and faded into velvet black insensibility.

From behind heralded by a beam of light and the squawk of a horn, came a crash as the Ford Car hit the tar barrel end on. Its front axle went back ten inches and the rear wheels rose upward. Two shadowy forms, that were groundlings at another time, took wings and flew in a neat parabola over the windscreen, striking the metal surface of the road with a single thud. They made no effort to rise, but lay in awkward sprawling attitudes as though in the midst of violent activity they had fallen asleep.

Richard Frencham Altar stood alone, blinking rather stupidly at the havoc he had wrought. It was such a relief when Flora stole out of the shadow of the trees and came toward him.

"What a shemozzle, isn't it?" he said dazedly. "I think we'd better get out of this, don't you?"

He wheeled the motor cycle into the centre of the road and bade her jump up behind.

Folks who were returning home late that night were astonished to see a hatless man with a white unshaved face tearing through the side streets of the south-west district of London on a motor cycle with a pretty, but very dishevelled maiden clinging on to the Flapper bracket and deliriously shouting apparently for no better reason than joy of speed.

An old gentleman who signed himself "Commonsense" wrote to the papers about it next day and expressed his disgust in no measured terms.



CHAPTER 34.

THE FINISHING STRAIGHT.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Torrington. "We have an important decision to make. Barraclough is on his way home, presumably with the concession in his pocket. Our opponents have made certain dispositions to prevent his safe arrival—those dispositions they are prepared to remove in consideration of a third interest."

Cassis snorted violently. Actual propinquity with danger, the clash of mind against mind had in a large measure restored his self-possession.

"Preposterous," he ejaculated.

Hilbert Torrington continued.

"It rests with us to decide whether or no we will accept their terms or take a chance."

"Don't forget the chance is Barraclough," cried Cranbourne, then swinging round on Hipps, he demanded:

"What are the odds against him?"

"Steep," was the laconical rejoinder.

Cranbourne hesitated a bare second.

"Accept their terms," said he.

"In favour?"

"Of course in favour."

Nugent Cassis shook him by the sleeve.

"I am heartily opposed to their acceptance. It is absurd to suppose that Barraclough is unequal to the task we have set him."

"Against?" queried Mr. Torrington.

"Emphatically against."

When it came to Almont's turn to vote his distress of mind was pathetic. He stood alternatively on one leg and the other. He spoke of "Jolly old public school traditions." He "doubted if the dear old sportsman could endure the idea of being protected at such a cost."

"No, damn it all," he concluded. "Why should we split the prize?"

"We can't juggle with men's lives," urged Cranbourne.

"It's insanity to wilt at the last moment," said Cassis.

Up went Lord Almont's hand.

"I vote against," he said.

Rather piteously Cranbourne appealed to his chief. As Chairman of the board Hilbert Torrington's vote counted as two.

"It rests with you, sir," he said.

The old man nodded and a queer smile played round the corners of his mouth—the smile of a pranky schoolboy.

"But surely," he said. "No one will doubt the course I shall take. One must always stand by one's colours. I accept the hazard Against." He moved a pace or two forward and bowed to Van Diest. "Good-evening, Gentlemen."

Until this moment no one had been conscious of Isabel's presence in the room. She had been a silent agonised spectator, controlled by the belief that the value of persons would eventually be proved higher than the value of things. But the cold blooded refusal to protect her lover at the price of a few paltry millions, appalled her beyond bearing. She ceased to be a pretty child with a shock of curly hair and was transformed into a veritable fury.

"You beasts, you brutes, you torturers!" she cried. "You'd let them kill him without lifting a hand—you—you, ohh!"

Van Diest and the American moved toward the door, but she barred the way.

"Pick up that telephone. You shall have your price."

"I can't think you command it," said Hipps.

"Can't you? Then listen. If you stop them—call off the men that are after him, you shall be told the map reference of the place where he found the radium."

There was a startled murmur from the company.

"He may have failed to get the concession. If that were so you'd have an equal chance. Will you call them off if I give you that?"

"But you can't, my dear," said Torrington gently.

"And even if you could, you mustn't," snapped Cassis.

"Mustn't!" There was something magnificent in her scorn. "Why I'd wreck the whole crowd of you for one sight of him. Here you——" and she swung round on Ezra Hipps. "Write this down."

"Bluff," said he.

"D'you think I'd let the man I love carry a secret I didn't share? Write this down."

It was Van Diest who stepped forward with "I take her word. Go on."

"Brewster's Series 19," cried Isabel. "Map 24."

Instantly a condition of chaos ruled. Cassis cried to her to stop "for Heaven's sake." Someone else exclaimed "That European." "It covers the northern area of——" and "Go on. Go on." Hipps was shouting. To concentrate in the midst of such a din was almost impossible. She covered her cars, closed her eyes, to force memory of the words and the numerals that were to follow. "Square F. North 27. West 33."

"She's there," cried Hipps, and whipped out a pistol to cover Cassis who was making for the telephone.

"No you don't. Stand away." He picked up the instrument and gave a number. "That Phillips? Clear all roads."

It was all that Isabel wanted to hear, just those three words which meant one man's safety at the possible price of a mighty fortune. It meant nothing to her that the American was calling for "My man with a suitcase at Charing Cross straight away. I hit this trail myself." She was not even conscious of a medley of voices in the street below—a series of cries and shouts—the blast of a police whistle. All this was without meaning. Consciousness was slipping away and had almost deserted her when the door was flung open and Anthony Barraclough burst into the room. He stood an instant, chest out and with eyes feverishly bright.

"Sorry I'm late, gentlemen, but I've done the trick—this packet——" he rocked a little. "By Gad, I believe I'm going to faint." He tottered forward into Isabel's arms and said—"It's you—how ripping!" That was all.

Cassis pushed forward with the words:

"Has he got it—has he got it?"

"This is what you want, I suppose," said Isabel, and taking the letter case from his pocket, threw it on the table. "He's fainted. Help me get him to his bed."

Doran and she half carried and half dragged him from the room.

No one was aware of Auriole, who had entered just behind and stood now with her back to the wall, biting her lip. After all, when a game is won, pawns are relatively of little importance—except to themselves.

"Signed? Registered?" said Van Diest, edging forward.

Nugent Cassis held the crackling document before his eyes—a Concession to Millions—and he answered between his teeth:

"Signed and registered."

"So," said Van Diest, with unexpected control, "we lose—Finish." But his hands trembled as he turned away.

Ezra P. Hipps did not desert his post at the telephone until he heard those words. Then he snapped viciously,

"Say, cancel those orders, Phillips—Wash out the lot."

It was too ridiculous at such a moment to contemplate the price of victory, but that is precisely what Auriole did.

"And you've never asked—never given a thought to the real man—the man who made it possible—who stayed out there on the road while——" She bit back her tears and turned savagely on Hipps and Van Diest. "Oh, God," she cried, "if anything has happened to him."

But nothing had—if you discount a little discomfort bravely borne. He walked into the room even as she spoke. Dirty he was, dishevelled and hollow-eyed, a very travesty of his former self. But there was a spring in his bearing that fires of adversity had failed to rob of its temper. He entered with a swing, a certain jauntiness—a dash of nonchaloir—pushing his way through the group of astonished financiers in the doorway and marching up to Van Diest and the American with a very fine air of "you be damned" about the carriage of his head.

"Get out," he said, uncompromisingly. "And tomorrow morning I'm coming down to Charing Cross to see you off by the Continental."

They both addressed him simultaneously and in very different tones to the ones he had grown accustomed to during the past three weeks. The word "cheque" figured largely in their proposals. Richard Frencham Altar cut them short with:

"Cheque from you? No, thanks. I'll take the smallest coin in each of your countries to wear on my watch chain. It'll remind me of my dealings with two millionaires. That train goes at ten tomorrow morning."

Ezra P. Hipps happened to see the light in Auriole's eyes as he and Van Diest moved toward the door. It was quite unmistakable and from his point of view, conclusive. He said nothing, however, and they passed out in silence.

It is probable that Hilbert Torrington also read a meaning in the girl's eyes for he was very active in marshalling his forces for departure.

"I think, gentlemen," he said, "we might meet tomorrow to discuss our obligation to Mr. Frencham Altar—an obligation by no means covered by the small arrangement we made with him." He grasped Richard warmly by the hand and there was moisture at the corners of his eyes. "What a splendid boy you are," he said. "Lord, but youth and adventure is a wonderful partnership, with a dash of romance thrown in as a prize. It's been a great game—hasn't it? A real tough fight. Great fun. Good night."

Even Cassis had something nice to say before they took their leave and left the man and the girl together.

Then Richard looked at Auriole and grinned, perhaps because her expression was so desperately serious.

"Couldn't you smile at a chap?" he asked.

She wrapped her cloak around her.

"You don't understand," she said. "Everything seems good to you at the moment—even me."

He shook his head whimsically.

"Don't say me that piece," he begged. "It sounds horrid. Where are you going?"

"I don't belong here," she answered.

"For that matter, neither do I, but I dare say I could extend my lease for another half hour—even though it did expire at eleven o'clock."

She came down and faced him.

"Listen," she said. "I don't want to be a nuisance to you and I won't be."

"You will be if you keep going to that door."

"I don't even know your name, but if you look at me like that, with laughter in your eyes—if you play the fool at such a time as this—how can I possibly keep my resolve."

"What resolve?"

"To go away and never come back."

"Come here," said Richard Frencham Altar, "come here at once."

"Oh, please," she pleaded. "Honestly, my dear, I'm not up to much and I know you are going to think I am. Oh, what are you going to do?"

This because his arms had gone round her and he had raised her chin to the level of his own.

"I'm going to start on the greatest adventure of all," he answered.



THE END.