"Where is the dam which our criminal friend built?"
Towton pointed straight ahead. "Round the next corner you could see it, but we do not go so far. There was a small lake there up on the moors which fed this stream. Hest simply got engineers to dam the lake and prevent too much water going to waste down the bed of this torrent. The dam runs right across the valley a mile and a half beyond my house."
"But isn't that dangerous. If it burst this valley would be flooded from end to end, and everybody would be drowned, to say nothing of the way in which the village would be smashed up."
"Well, yes." Towton pinched his nether lip uneasily. "I've thought of that myself many a time. But I was abroad when the dam was constructed. There certainly--as I have often said--should be an outlet for the water other than the pipes which supply Bowderstyke and the villages outside the valley, capacious as those same pipes undoubtedly are. Assuredly, if the reservoir burst there would be great loss of life and destruction of property. But the Bolly Dam is very strongly built, so I have no fear of anything happening. You can see it from my house, and we'll pay it a visit in a day or two. Meantime, this is Bowderstyke village."
By this time they were passing through quite a number of small houses, from the windows of which lights gleamed cheerfully. The motor soon left these behind, then swerved to the right--looking up from the entrance to the valley--and shortly began to climb a winding road. At this point, as the Colonel had foretold, the vale broadened abruptly, and the high moors stood away so as to form a kind of deep cup. Up the side of this, the road along which they were travelling sloped upward for some distance, then turned on itself and sloped still higher. Shortly the motor attained the highest level, and in the moonlight Vernon could see the moors stretching for miles, lonely and romantic. A straight road ran parallel with the upper portion of the valley for close upon half a mile. Then appeared a miniature forest, encircled by a high stone wall. This was undoubtedly artificial, as the moorlands were treeless, and the unexpected woodland looked out of place amidst its bleak surroundings.
The motor soon arrived at two tall stone pillars crested with heraldic monsters, and passing through these, spun up a short avenue to stop before a large white house, brilliantly lighted up. Spacious lawns opened up before the mansion, interspersed with flowerbeds, now bloomless, and the whole was shut in by the fairy forest, as Vernon called it in his own mind.
"Here we are," said Colonel Towton jumping from the car. "Allow me to welcome you to The Grange, my friend."
"Thank heaven the journey's at an end," said Vernon.