IT was close on midnight when a car grated and stopped in front of the little Georgian house in Pendish, and the truant stumbled through the door, left open, into the presence of Mrs. Pettiland who was anxiously awaiting him. He was wet through, dishevelled, exhausted. He was shivering with cold and his face was like the mask of a ghost. She met him in the passage and dragged him into the little sea-haunted parlour.
“Oh, what have you been doing?”
She had been worried all day, unable to account for the money, a month’s rent and board in advance, in the envelope addressed to her.
“Didn’t I tell you not to overdo yourself?”
He greeted her upbraidings with a laugh of bravado.
“I set out to-day on my last adventure. This is the end of it. I’m here for the rest of time.”
“You’ll be in the churchyard for the rest of eternity, if you don’t go to bed at once,” she declared.
She packed him to his room; fussed motherwise about him; dosed him with ammoniated quinine; stuck hot-water bottles in his bed; stood over him with hot Bovril with an egg in it. She prescribed whisky, also hot; but since the fatal night at Rowington’s dinner party, he had abjured alcohol.
“Now perhaps you’ll tell me what has happened,” she said.
“My game leg gave out when I got to some quarries. I believe the beastly place is called Woorow——”