E-text prepared by D Alexander, Mary Meehan,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
([http://www.pgdp.net])
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
([http://archive.org])

THE HOUSE 'ROUND THE CORNER

BY GORDON HOLMES

AUTHOR OF

A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE, THE ARNCLIFFE PUZZLE, Etc.

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1919, by
EDWARD J. CLODE

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

WHEREIN THE HOUSE RECEIVES A NEW TENANT

The train had panted twelve miles up a sinuous valley, halting at three tiny stations on the way; it dwelt so long at the fourth that the occupant of a first-class carriage raised his eyes from the book he was reading. He found the platform packed with country folk, all heading in the same direction. Hitherto, this heedless traveller had been aware of some station-master or porter bawling an unintelligible name; now, his fellow-passengers seemed to know what place this was without being told; moreover, they seemed to be alighting there.

A porter, whose face, hands, and clothing were of one harmonious tint, suggesting that he had been dipped bodily in some brownish dye, and then left to dry in the sun, opened the door.

"Aren't you gettin' out, sir?" he inquired, and his tone implied both surprise and pain.

"Is this Nuttonby?" said the passenger.

"Yes, sir."

"Why this crush of traffic?"

"It's market day, sir."

"Thanks. I didn't expect to see such a crowd. Have you a parcels office, where I can leave some baggage?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hang on to this bag, then. There are three boxes in the van. You'll need a barrow—they're heavy!"

By this time, the man who knew so little of important Nuttonby—which held 3,005 inhabitants in the 1911 census, having increased by two since 1901—had risen, and was collecting a fisherman's outfit, and some odds and ends of personal belongings. He followed the porter, who, on eyeing the rods and pannier, and with some knowledge of "county" manners, had accepted the stranger as entitled to hold a first-class ticket. Sure enough, the boxes were heavy. The guard had to assist in handling them.

"By gum!" said the porter, when he tried to lift the first on to a trolley.

"Books," explained the traveler.

"I thought mebbe they wuz lead," said the porter.

"Some books have that quality," said the other.

The guard, a reader in his spare time, smiled. The owner of so much solid literature seized a stout leather handle.

"I'll give you a hand," he said, and the porter soon added to his slight store of facts concerning the newcomer. This tall, sparsely-built man in tweeds and a deer-stalker cap was no weakling.

The platform was nearly empty when the porter began to trundle the loaded trolley along its length. A pert youth appeared from nowhere, and cried "Ticket!" firmly, almost threateningly. He was given a first-class ticket from York, and a receipt for excess luggage. The bit of white paste-board startled him. "Thank you, sir," he said. First-class passengers were rare birds at Nuttonby; too late, he knew he ought to have said "Ticket, please!"

The same pert youth, appearing again from nowhere, officiated in the parcels office. He noticed that none of the articles bore a name or initials; they were brand-new; their only railway labels were "York, from King's Cross," and "Nuttonby, from York."

"Book the bag and these small articles separately," he was instructed. "I may want them soon. The boxes may be sent for this afternoon; I don't know yet." He turned to the porter: "Is there a house agent in the town?"

"Yes, sir—two."

"Which is the better—the man with the larger clientèle—sorry, I mean with the greater number of houses on his books?"

"Well, sir, Walker an' Son have bin in business here fifty year an' more."

"I'll try Walker. Where's his place?"

"Next door the 'Red Lion,' sir."

Then the youth, anxious to atone, and rather quicker-witted than the brown-hued one, got in a word.

"The 'Red Lion' is halfway up the main street, sir. Turn to your right when you leave here, an' you're there in two minutes."

"I'll show the gentleman," said the porter, who had decided a month ago that this blooming kid was putting on airs. He was as good as his word—or nearly so. A tip of half a crown was stupefying, but he gathered his wits in time to say brokenly at the exit:

"Wu-Wu-Walker's is straight up, sir."

Straight up the stranger went. The wide street was crammed with stalls, farmers' carts, carriers' carts, dog-carts, even a couple of automobiles, for Wednesday, being market day, was also police-court day and Board of Guardians day. He passed unheeded. On Wednesdays, Nuttonby was a metropolis; on any other day in the week he would have drawn dozens of curious eyes, peeping surreptitiously over short curtains, or more candidly in the open. Of course, he was seen by many, since Nuttonby was not so metropolitan that it failed to detect a new face, even on Wednesdays; but his style and appearance were of the gentry; Nuttonby decided that he had strayed in from some "big" house in the district.

Walker & Son, it would seem, were auctioneers, land valuers, and probate estimators as well as house agents. Their office was small, but not retiring. It displayed a well-developed rash of sale posters, inside and out. One, in particular, was heroic in size. It told of a "spacious mansion, with well-timbered park," having been put up for auction—five years earlier. Whiteness of paper and blackness of type suggested that Walker & Son periodically renewed this aristocrat among auction announcements—perhaps to kindle a selling spirit among the landed gentry, a notoriously conservative and hold-tight class.

A young man, seated behind a counter, reading a sporting newspaper, and smoking a cigarette, rose hastily when the caller entered.

"Yes, sir," he said, thereby implying instant readiness to engage in one or all of the firm's activities.

"Are you Mr. Walker?" said the newcomer.

"Yes, sir."

"Ah! I thought you might be the son."

"Well, I am, if it comes to that. Do you want my father?"

Walker, junior, was a Nuttonby "nut"—a sharp young blade who did not tolerate chaff.

"I want to rent a furnished house in or near a quiet country village, where there is some good fishing," was the answer. "Now, you can determine whether I should trouble Mr. Walker, senior, or not?"

"No trouble at all, sir! He'll be here in ten seconds."

Walker, junior, had nearly made the same mistake as the ticket-collecting youth; however, he estimated time correctly. He went out, put his head through the open window of the "Red Lion's" bar-parlor, and shouted: "Dad, you're wanted!" Thus, within ten seconds, the stranger saw the firm!

He repeated his need, and there was a great parade of big-leafed books, while the elder Walker ascertained the prospective client's exact requirements. Whittled down to bare facts, they amounted to this: A house, in a small and remote village, and a trout stream. The absolute seclusion of the village and its diminutive proportions were insisted on, and property after property was rejected, though the Walkers were puzzled to know why.

This distinguished-looking man wished to find a dwelling far removed from any social center. His ideal was a tiny moorland hamlet, miles from the railway, and out of the beaten track of summer visitors. Suddenly, the son cried:

"Elmdale is the very place, dad!"

Dad's face brightened, but clouded again instantly.

"You mean—er—the house 'round the corner?" he said, pursing his lips.

"Yes."

"I'm afraid it wouldn't suit."

"Why not?" put in the stranger. "I rather like the name."

"I didn't mention any name, sir," and Walker, senior, still looked glum.

"You described it as the house 'round the corner—an excellent name. It attracts me. Where is Elmdale?"

The head of the firm pointed to a map of the North Riding hanging above the fireplace.

"Here you are," he said, seizing a pen and running it along the meandering black line of a stream. "Eight miles from Nuttonby, and thousands from every other town—on the edge of the moor—about forty houses in the village—and a first-rate beck, with trout running from four ounces to half a pound—but——"

"But what?"

"The house, sir. You won't like the house."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing. It's comfortable enough, and well furnished."

Yet again he hesitated.

"Why, it appears to be, as your son said, the very place."

Walker, senior, smiled drearily. He knew what was coming.

"I can't recommend it, sir, and for this reason. A gentleman named Garth—Mr. Stephen Garth; some sort of professor, I understand—lived there a many years, with his wife and daughter. Nice, quiet people they were, and the young lady was a beauty. No one could make out why they should wish to be buried alive in a hole like Elmdale, but they seemed happy enough. Then, two years since, in this very month of June, Mrs. Garth and the girl drove into Nuttonby in their governess car, and went off by train, sending the trap back by a hired man. Mr. Garth mooned about for a week or two, and then hanged himself one evening alongside a grandfather's clock which stands in the hall. That made a rare stir, I can tell you; since then, no one will look at the Grange, which is its proper name. I need hardly say that the villagers have seen Mr. Garth's ghost many times, particularly in June, because in that month the setting sun throws a peculiar shadow through a stained-glass window on the half landing. Last year I let the place to a Sheffield family who wanted moorland air. My! What a row there was when Mrs. Wilkins heard of the suicide, and, of course, saw the ghost! It was all I could do to stave off an action for damages. 'Never again,' said I. 'If anybody else rents or buys the house, they take the ghost with it.'"

"Is it for sale?"

"Oh, yes! Neither Mrs. Garth nor Miss Marguérite have come near Elmdale since they left. They didn't attend the funeral, and I may add, in confidence, that Messrs. Holloway & Dobb, solicitors in this town, who have charge of their affairs—so far as the ownership of the Grange goes, at any rate—do not know their whereabouts. It is a sad story, sir."

The would-be tenant was apparently unmoved by the story's sadness.

"What kind of house is it?" he inquired.

"Old-fashioned, roomy, with oaken rafters, and a Jacobean grate in the dining-room. Five bedrooms. Fine garden, with its own well, fed by a spring. The kind of seventeenth-century dwelling that would fetch a high rent nowadays if near a town. As it is, I'd be glad to take sixty pounds a year for it, or submit an offer."

"Furnished?"

"Yes, sir, and some decent stuff in it, too. I'm surprised Messrs. Holloway & Dobb don't sell that, anyhow; but I believe they have a sort of order from Mrs. Garth that the property is to be sold as it stands, and not broken up piece-meal."

"Why did you describe it as the house 'round the corner?"

Mr. Walker smiled.

"That was for my son's benefit, sir," he explained. "The Elmdale cottages are clustered together on the roadside. The Grange stands above them, at one end, and a few yards up a road leading to the moor. It commands a fine view, too," he added regretfully.

"I'll take it," said the stranger.

Walker, junior, looked jubilant, but his father's years had weakened confidence in mankind. Many a good let was lost ere the agreement was signed and this one was beset by special difficulties.

"If you give me your name and address, I'll consult Messrs. Holloway & Dobb——" he began, and was probably more astonished than he would care to confess by the would-be tenant's emphatic interruption—

"Is this property to let, or is it not?"

"Yes, sir. Haven't I said so?"

"Very well! I offer you a quarter's rent, payable to you or your son when I have looked at the place. As a matter of form, I would like one of you to accompany me to Elmdale at once, because I must inquire into the fishing. I suppose you can hire a conveyance of sorts to take us there? Of course, in any event, I shall pay your fee for the journey. My name is Robert Armathwaite. I am a stranger in this part of Yorkshire, but if you, or Messrs. Holloway & Dobb, care to call at the local bank, say, in three days' time, you will be satisfied as to my financial standing. I'll sign an agreement for a yearly tenancy, terminable thereafter by three months' written notice, when I pay the first installment of the rent. As the place is furnished, you will probably stipulate for payment in advance throughout. I fancy you can draw up such an agreement in half an hour, and, if there is an inventory, it should be checked and initialed when we visit the house. Does that arrangement suit you?"

The Walkers were prosperous and pompous, but they knew when to sink their pomposity.

"Yes, sir, it can be done," agreed the elder man.

"Thank you. Which is the leading bank here?"

Walker, senior, indicated a building directly opposite.

"I'll have a word with the manager," said Mr. Armathwaite. "If I'm here in half an hour, will you have a carriage waiting?"

"A dog-cart, sir. My own. My son will attend to you."

"Excellent. Evidently, your firm understands business."

And Mr. Armathwaite went out.

The Walkers watched as he crossed the road, and entered the bank. Their side of the street being higher than the other, they could see, above the frosted lower half of the bank's window, that he approached the counter, and was ushered into the manager's private room.

"What d'ye make of it, dad?" inquired the "nut," forgetting his importance in the absorbing interest of the moment.

"Dad" tickled his bald scalp with the handle of the pen.

"Tell you what," he said solemnly. "Some houses have an attraction for queer folk. Whoever built the Grange where it is must have been daft. The people who lived there when I was a young man were a bit touched. Mr. Garth was mad, we know, an' Mrs. Wilkins was the silliest woman I ever met. Now comes this one."

"He looks all right."

"You never can tell. At any rate, we'll take his money, and welcome. I asked sixty, but wouldn't have sneezed at forty. Neither would Holloway & Dobb; they've some costs to collect since the Wilkins' affair. Go and get the trap ready. And mind you, Jim, no hanky-panky."

The youthful Walker winked.

"You leave that to me," he said. "What about the fee—will he stand a guinea?"

"You might try it, at any rate."

At the appointed time, half-past eleven o'clock, Mr. Armathwaite came, carrying a large parcel wrapped in brown paper. He cast an appreciative eye at a wiry cob, put the parcel in the back of the waiting dog-cart, and climbed to the seat beside the younger Walker, now attired de rigueur for the country.

"Will you kindly call at the railway station?" he said.

The request was unexpected, but the driver nodded, and showed some skill in turning through the congeries of vehicles which crowded the street.

At the station, the bag and other small articles were withdrawn from the parcels office, and deposited beside the package in brown paper. James Walker was mystified, but said nothing. Returning through the main street, he answered a few questions concerning local matters, and, once in the open country, grew voluble under the influence of a first-rate Havana proffered by his companion. Men of his type often estimate their fellows by a tobacco standard, and Walker privately appraised the cigar as "worth a bob, at the lowest figure." From that instant, Mr. Robert Armathwaite and Mr. James Walker took up their relative positions without demur on the part of either.

Oddly enough, seeing that the newcomer had expressed his dislike for society, he listened with interest to bits of gossip concerning the owners of the various estates passed on the way. He was specially keen on names, even inquiring as to what families one titled landowner was connected with by marriage. Then, as to the fishing, could the Walkers arrange that for him?

Forgetting his 'cuteness, Walker settled the point off-hand.

"You had better deal with the matter yourself, sir," he said. "There'll be no difficulty. Nearly all the Elmdale farms are freeholds, most of 'em with common rights on the moor. Why, when one of 'em changes hands, the buyer has the right to take over all the sheep footed on the seller's part of the moor. P'raps you don't know what 'footed' means. Sheep will always go back to the place where they were raised, and the habit is useful when they stray over an open moorland. So, you see, all you have to do is to get permission from two or three farmers, and you can fish for miles."

He tried to talk of the Garths, particularly of the pretty daughter, but his hearer's attention wandered; obviously, information as to the ways and habits of the local yeomanry was more to Mr. Armathwaite's taste than a "nut's" gushing about a good-looking girl.

Within an hour, after five miles of fair roadway and two of a switchback, mostly rising, Walker pointed with his whip to a thin line of red-tiled houses, here and there a thatched roof among them, nestling at the foot of a gill, or ravine, which pierced the side of a gaunt moorland. Above the hamlet, at the eastern end, rose an old-fashioned stone house, square, with a portico in the center, and a high-pitched roof of stone slabs.

"There's Elmdale," he said, "and that's the Grange. Looks a god-forsaken hole, doesn't it, sir?"

"If you pay heed to the real meanings of words, no place on earth merits that description," said Mr. Armathwaite.

Walker was no whit abashed.

"Well, no," he grinned.

"I ought to have asked sooner, but have you brought any keys?"

The agent instinct warned the other that his choice of an adjective had been unwise in more ways than one.

"That's all right, sir," he said cheerfully. "The keys are kept in the village—at Mrs. Jackson's. She's a useful old body. If you want a housekeeper, she and her daughter would suit you down to the ground."

Little more was said until the steaming pony was pulled up in front of a thatched cottage. Seen thus intimately, and in the blaze of a June sun, Elmdale suggested coziness. Each house, no matter what its size, had a garden in front and an orchard behind. Long, narrow pastures ran steeply up to the moor, and cattle and sheep were grazing in them. There were crops on the lower land. For all its remoteness, Elmdale faced south, and its earth was fertile.

Armathwaite sat in the dog-cart while James Walker ran up the strip of flower-laden garden, and peered in through a low doorway. In later days, the singular fact was borne in on Armathwaite that had his companion adopted any other method of making known his business—had he, for instance, shouted to Mrs. Jackson or her daughter, Betty, and asked for the keys of the Grange—the whole course of his subsequent life would unquestionably have been altered. A loose stone under the foot of an emperor's horse may change the map of the world. In this instance, a remarkable, and, in some respects, unique series of events arose solely from the fact that Walker, junior, was of active habit, and alighted from the vehicle in preference to announcing his wishes for others to hear; because Betty Jackson, at that moment, was plucking gooseberries in the back garden, and knew nothing of what was going on until a country maid's belated wit failed completely to stem the tide of circumstance.

Armathwaite caught scraps of a brief but seemingly heated argument going on inside the cottage. It was couched in the Yorkshire dialect, which he understood, to some extent, but could not speak. Then Walker, a gallant figure in straw hat, gray coat, red waistcoat with gilded buttons, breeches and gaiters and brown boots, strutted into sight. He was red-faced and laughing, and a bundle of keys jingled in one hand.

"Mrs. Jackson's as bad as any of 'em," he cried, springing to his seat and taking the reins from a clip on the dash-board. "Made such a to-do about anyone looking over the house. Asked if you'd heard of the ghost, too. And, blow me, if she didn't pretend she'd mislaid the keys! We wouldn't have got 'em for a deuce of a time if I hadn't twigged 'em hanging on a nail, and grabbed 'em. Then she gave me my name for nothing, I can assure you."

"Yet you recommended her for the post of housekeeper," said Armathwaite, smiling.

"Yes, sir. She's a rare good cook, and tidy, too. Can't make out what's come over her. She was fair scared to death."

Walker's statement as to Mrs. Jackson's behavior was by no means highly colored. Before he reached the dog-cart, the old woman had hurried into the back garden.

"Betty!" she shrilled. "Betty, where are you?"

A head in a poke-bonnet rose above a clump of tall gooseberry bushes, and a voice answered:

"Yes, mother, what is it?"

"Run, girl, run! What's to be done? Mr. Walker has brought a man to look at the house."

"What house?"

"The Grange, to be sure."

"Oh, mother!"

Betty ran quickly enough now. She was a strongly-built, apple-cheeked lass; but there was a glint of fear in her eyes, and the faces of both mother and daughter had gone gray under the tan of moor air and much work in the open.

"Whatever can we do?" cried Mrs. Jackson, with the hopeless distress of a woman overwhelmed by some unforeseen and tragic occurrence. "That impudent young Walker came and snatched at the keys before I could stop him. And they've gone there, the pair of 'em! There they are now—halfway up the hill."

All this, of course, was couched in "broad Yorkshire," which, however, need not enter into the record. The two gazed at the men in the dog-cart, who were partly visible above a yew hedge, since the by-road in which the Grange was situated turned up the hill by the gable of Mrs. Jackson's cottage.

"Oh, mother!" said the girl, in awe-stricken accents, "why didn't you hide 'em?"

"How was I to hide 'em? I was knocked all of a heap. Who'd have thought of anyone coming here to-day, of all days in the year?"

"Who's that with him?" Betty almost sobbed.

"The man who's going over the house, of course."

"Oh, dear! If only I'd known! I'd have taken the keys and gone with them."

"What good would that have done?"

"I might have humbugged them into waiting a minute or two. I'd have thought of some excuse. But don't worry too much, mother. Maybe they'll give the least little look round, and come away again."

"And maybe they won't," cried Mrs. Jackson angrily, for she was recovering from her fright, and her daughter's implied reproach was irritating. "I did my best, and it can't be helped now, no matter what happens. Run after them, Betty, and offer to help. You may manage something, even now."

The girl needed no second bidding. She was through the cottage and out in the road in a jiffy. But she had lost a minute or more already, and the sturdy galloway was climbing a steep hill quickly. When she reached a garden gate to which the reins were tied, the front door of the Grange stood open, and the visitors were inside.

"Oh, dear!" she breathed, in a heart-broken way. "Oh, dear! If only mother had called me sooner! Now, it's too late! And I promised that no one should know. Well, I must do my best. Just a bit of luck, and I may pull things straight yet!"

CHAPTER II

SHOWING HOW EVEN A HOUSE MAY HAVE A WAY OF ITS OWN

While Walker was fiddling with the lock, not being quite sure as to the right key, Armathwaite had eyed the southern landscape. Elmdale was six hundred feet above sea level, and the Grange stood fully a hundred feet higher than the village, so a far-flung panorama of tillage, pasture, and woodland provided a delightful picture on that glorious June day. To the north, he knew, stretched miles of wild moor, and the heather began where the spacious garden ended. A glance at the map in the Walkers' office had shown that this bleak waste was crossed by mere tracks, marked in the dotted lines which motorists abhor. Indeed, the very road leading to the house was not macadamized beyond the gate; two years of disuse had converted even the stone-covered portion into a sort of meadow, because grass, the sulkiest of vegetables in a well-tended lawn, will grow luxuriantly on a granite wall if left alone.

Truly, Elmdale seemed to be at the end of the world—the world of Yorkshire, at any rate—and Robert Armathwaite found its aspect pleasing. A lock clicked; he turned, and entered a domain he was now fully resolved to make his own.

"Well, I'm blest!" said Walker, speaking in a surprised way; "anyone 'ud think the place hadn't been empty an hour, let alone two years, not countin' Mrs. Wilkins's couple of nights. I wonder who left these clothes, and hats, and things!"

He had good reason for a certain stare of bewilderment.

The door, which was stoutly built, with a pane of sheet glass in the upper half, opened straight into a spacious, oak-paneled hall. Left and right were a dining-room and a drawing-room, each containing two windows. Behind the dining-room a wide staircase gave access to the upper floors, and a flood of rich and variously-tinted light from a long arched window glowed on the dark panels below, and glistened on the polished mahogany case of a grandfather's clock which faced the foot of the stairs. The wall opposite the entrance was pierced by a half-open door, through which could be seen laden bookshelves reaching up eight feet or more. Another door, beyond the stairway, showed the only possible means of approach to the kitchen and domestic offices.

There were no pictures in the hall, but some antique plates and dishes of blue china were ranged on a shelf above the wainscot, and a narrow table and four straight-backed chairs, all of oak, were in tasteful keeping with the surroundings. On each side of the dining-room door were double rows of hooks, and on these hung the garments which had caught the agent's eye.

A bowler hat, a frayed panama, a cap, a couple of overcoats, even a lady's hat and mackintosh, lent an air of occupancy to the house, which was not diminished by the presence of several sticks and umbrellas in a couple of Chinese porcelain stands. Walker took down the panama. It was dust-laden, and the inner band of leather had a clammy feeling. He replaced it hastily.

"That's the Professor's," he said, trying to speak unconcernedly. "I remember seeing him in it, many a time."

Armathwaite noticed the action, and was aware of a peculiar timbre in Walker's voice.

"Now, suppose we lay that ghost, and have done with it," he said quietly. "Where did my worthy and retrospective landlord hang himself?"

"There," said Walker, indicating a solitary hook screwed through the china shelf near the clock. "That bronze thing," pointing to a Burmese gong lying on the floor, "used to hang there. He took it down, tied the rope to the hook, and kicked a chair away.... If you come here," and he advanced a few paces, "you'll see why a ghost appears."

"Mr. Walker," bleated someone timidly.

Mr. Walker unquestionably jumped, and quite as unquestionably swore, even when he recognized Betty Jackson, standing in the porch.

"Well, what is it?" he cried gruffly, hoping his companion has missed that display of nerves.

"Please, sir, mother thought—" began the girl; but the startled "nut" was annoyed, and showed it.

"I don't care what your mother thinks," he shouted. "Refusing me the keys, indeed! What next? I've a good mind to report her to Messrs. Holloway & Dobb."

"But, sir, she only wanted to make the house a bit more tidy. It's dusty and stuffy. If you gentlemen would be kind enough to wait in the garden five minutes, I'd open up the rooms, and raise a window here and there."

Betty, tearful and repentant, had entered the hall in her eagerness to serve. Walker weakened; he had a soft spot in his heart for girls.

"No matter now," he said. "We shan't be here long. This gentleman is just going to look round and see if the place suits him."

"The best bedroom is all upside down," she persisted. "If you'd give me three minutes——"

"Run away and play, and don't bother us," he answered off-handedly. "As I was about to say, Mr. Armathwaite, someone in the old days put stained glass in that window on the landing. You'll notice it shows a knight in black armor—Edward, the Black Prince, it's believed to be—and, when the sun sets in the nor' west, it casts a strong shadow on the paneling beside the clock. Of course, it can be seen from the porch, and it accounts for this silly story about the ghost——"

"Oh!" screamed the girl. "Why talk of such horrid things? There's no ghost!"

Her cry was so unexpectedly shrill that Walker yielded to an anger almost as loud-voiced.

"Confound you!" he stormed at her; "take yourself off! One more word from you, and your mother loses her job."

Armathwaite looked into the girl's troubled face and saw there a fear, a foreboding, which were very real, if not to be accounted for readily.

"Kindly leave us," he said. "If I want Mrs. Jackson, or you, I'll call at the cottage."

There was an air of authority about Mr. Armathwaite that disconcerted Betty more than Walker's bluster. She went out and closed the front door. The agent ran and opened it again. The girl was standing on the path, clear of the porch, and gazing wistfully at the house.

"Will you mind your own business?" he grumbled. "The deuce take it, what's come to you to-day? You and your mother seem half crazy."

"We don't like folk to see the place at its worst," she said, rather defiantly.

"You're doing your best to turn Mr. Armathwaite against it, I should think," was the angry comment. "Now, don't touch this door again, and clear out, d'ye hear?"

Betty flushed. She was distressed, but dales' blood boils quickly when subjected to the fire of contumely.

"I haven't asked such a favor," she said. "And you might keep a civil tongue in your head."

Walker sniffed his annoyance. But why bandy words with this aggressive young woman? He swung on his heel.

"Sorry you should have met with such a queer reception, Mr. Armathwaite," he said. "I can't account for it. I really can't. Perhaps Mrs. Jackson feels hurt that I didn't let her know you were coming, but——"

"Never mind Mrs. Jackson or her daughter," said Armathwaite placidly. "I'll soon settle matters with them. Now, you have an inventory, I believe? Suppose we start here."

"Then you've decided to take the house, sir?"

"Yes, two hours ago, in Nuttonby."

"I wish all our clients were like you," laughed Walker. "You know what you want and see that you get it.... Well, sir, as it happens, the inventory begins with the hall. I'll read, and you might note the items, stopping me if there's any doubt."

The agent rattled through his task, but was pulled up several times in dining-room and drawing-room, when a picture or two, some Sheffield plate, and various bits of china were missing. Black doubt seized the sharp Walker when this had happened for the fourth time. In all, there were seven disappearances, and, in each instance, the article was old and fairly valuable. Country villages, he reflected, were ransacked nowadays by collectors of curios. When opportunity served, he and Mrs. Jackson would have some earnest words.

But surprise and relief came in the discovery of the seven; they were piled, with a number of books, on a table in the library.

"I suppose some kind of spring cleaning is going on," he said sheepishly. "Now the cat is out of the bag. Why the deuce didn't Betty say so, and have done with it!"

"I imagine she was trying to tell us something of the sort," smiled the other unconcernedly. "Surely we have not got to check the titles of all these books?"

"No, sir. They're lumped together—about eight hundred volumes."

Armathwaite surveyed the shelves with the eye of a reader.

"That must be nearly right," he said, after a little pause. "I must not get mine mixed with my predecessor's. I've brought nearly two hundred myself."

Walker thought of the brown paper parcel, which seemed to have a certain solidity, but said nothing. In the first place, if eight hundred books occupied so much space, a quarter of that number would fit in no ordinary sheet of brown paper. Secondly, Mr. Armathwaite's manner did not invite unnecessary questions. The kitchen and scullery were soon dealt with. There was coal in a cellar, and a supply of wood, and a number of lamps drew attention to some tins of oil.

"How much for this lot?" inquired the would-be tenant.

"Nothing," said Walker, in a sudden fit of generosity. "These stores were left by Mrs. Wilkins, and lost sight of during the row. My, what a bother she raised!"

"Yet there is no ghost; we have Betty's word for it. Now—the bedrooms."

The "best" bedroom—that in the south-east angle—was certainly not in disorder. Indeed, it looked fresher and cleaner than any of the others; the bed was spotless; even the window-sill had been dusted recently.

"Of course," said the agent, "those two silly women have been tidying things up a bit for the season. I'm getting the hang of things by degrees. They're afraid I might think it should have been done sooner."

"Probably," agreed Armathwaite, who, however, held a somewhat different view. The girl was not afraid of Mr. James Walker. Of whom, then, or of what? If the inquiry interested him he would find out.

The remaining bedrooms held at least one year's dust.

A box-room, lumber-room, and servant's bedroom occupied the second floor. In the ceiling of a small lobby there was a trap-door.

"That leads to a space beneath the roof," said Walker. "By the way, there ought to be a ladder. It's gone."

Being, as has been seen, of active habit, he brought a chair from the bedroom, stood on it, pushed up the flap, and peered into the semi-obscurity of a triangular, rafter-lined attic, lighted only by a tiny square of glass cemented into one of the flat stone slabs of the roof.

"Oh, here it is," he announced. "Shall I pull it out?"

"No, thanks," said Armathwaite. "I don't suppose I shall mount so high again during my tenancy."

The younger man closed the trap, and, as it had been unfastened previously, shot a bolt into its socket.

"Well, that ends it," he said, brushing some grime off his hands. "If you care to stroll through the garden you'll find plenty of fruit coming on. This should be a good year for apples and plums, I'm told. It's too late to raise any potatoes or vegetables, but the village will supply plenty of table stuff, and cheap, too."

"Let me see," mused Armathwaite aloud. "Fifteen pounds rent, and, say, two guineas for your fee, and another guinea for the conveyance—eighteen pounds three shillings in all. Let us adjourn to the library, and I'll pay you, sign the agreement, and initial the inventory. Then I need not detain you any longer, Mr. Walker."

The agent looked blank, as well he might. He was flustered, too, by the terms offered for his valuable services.

"You don't mean that you're going to stay here straightaway, sir?" he cried.

"Yes. I came prepared for immediate occupation. That is why I brought my bag, and some groceries."

"Groceries!"

Walker was so astonished that he could only repeat the word.

"That parcel, you know. I'm an old campaigner—that is, I have much experience of camping out, under far less pleasant conditions than in a delightful house in a Yorkshire village. I shall be quite happy here."

"But there's a kind of an inn not far off; you'll come and have a snack there with me, sir?" was all that Walker could find to say at the moment.

"I'm much obliged to you, but I may not stir out again to-day. Shall we go down?"

They descended the stairs, which creaked loudly under their feet. Walker was puzzled to understand a cool customer of the Armathwaite type. He had never heard of a tenancy being entered into with such promptitude, yet there was no point in the stranger's behavior which he could fix on as definitely eccentric, or even unusual. The man evidently knew his own mind, and, if he paid up, the philosophy of Walker, senior, fitted the case admirably.

Still it was a slightly dazed Son who pocketed fifteen pounds in notes and three guineas in coin, and gave receipts for these sums, and exchanged copies of an agreement, and handed over the keys.

"Take another cigar," said the new tenant, bidding him good-bye at the front door, when bag and parcel had been brought in and dumped on the hall table. "Oh, there is one other small matter. I left three boxes at Nuttonby Station. Here is the voucher. Can you get some carter or farmer to bring them here, to-day or to-morrow? I'll pay him well for his trouble. They're rather heavy—books, mostly."

Conscious of a subdued feeling which he was wholly unable to explain, Walker took the cigar and the printed slip, raised his hat—an action which vexed him when he recalled it subsequently—and strolled down to the gate and the waiting dog-cart. Rattling the reins to let the pony know that he would stand no nonsense, he turned the corner on one wheel, and gave not the slightest heed to Betty Jackson's frantic efforts to attract his attention. Without slackening pace at the Fox and Hounds Inn, he whisked into the Nuttonby road, but pulled up on the crest of the first hill.

Looking back at Elmdale, lying snug and content in the blazing sunshine of early afternoon, he gazed at the Grange during a full minute. The front door was closed. So far as he could make out, no tall figure was sauntering in garden or orchard. Then he felt in his breeches pocket, to make sure, by the touch of notes and gold, that he was not dreaming.

"Well, I'm jiggered, if this isn't a rum go!" he muttered, and chirruped the pony into a trot again.

In the meantime, Mr. Robert Armathwaite had watched his hurried departure, in the first instance from the porch and subsequently from one of the windows in the dining-room.

"Perhaps I've made a mistake," he communed, with an amused smile, when he noted the momentary stopping of the dog-cart outside the village. "I've puzzled that young sprig, and I might have avoided that. Not that it matters a great deal. His father will inquire at the bank about my financial standing, and the pair of them will put me down as a well-to-do lunatic. Maybe they will prove right. Who can tell? At any rate, I've not felt so content with my lot since I left India. Now for some bread and cheese, and a thorough survey of my domain."

He unpacked the brown paper parcel on the kitchen table, and thereby proved himself at least well skilled as a caterer. Bacon, flour, bread, tea, coffee, sugar—all manner of simple domestic stores were there. He had, in fact, gone into a grocer's shop in Nuttonby, produced a written list, and asked that the articles named therein should be of the best quality and got ready at once.

While munching a frugal meal he bethought himself of the water supply. Unlocking the back door, he found the well, and drew a bucket of water, which was excellent in quality, and by no means suffering from disuse; indeed, he learnt later that the Jacksons and other cottagers took their supply from that source.

After a stroll round the garden and orchard—noting the laden gooseberry and currant bushes in the one, and several varieties of apples, pears, plums, and cherries in the other—he went back to the house. Going upstairs, he took possession of the "best" room, and distributed the contents of the bag among various drawers and on a dressing-table. A large wardrobe contained some feminine garments, old, but of good quality, and he left them undisturbed. Examining the bed, he found the sheets scrupulously clean and well-aired. To all seeming, they had been put there that very day, and he believed that the Jackson family meant to accommodate some friend in the Grange for the night, which reasonable surmise explained Betty Jackson's anxiety lest any hint of the project should reach the agent's ears.

"It's too bad if I've contrived to upset their plans," he mused. "They're welcome to any other room, for all that I care, and I'll tell them so if I come across either of them this evening."

Nevertheless, meaning to be lord of his own realm, he locked the doors, both back and front, when he went for a ramble over the moors. He was willing to fall in with any hospitable arrangement the caretakers might have in view, but they must consult him, and he refused to have either of them prowling about the house in his absence.

He followed the moorland road for some miles, meeting no one, and seeing no living creature save hundreds of black-faced sheep. Not even a grouse scurried across the heather, for June is the nesting season, and the parent birds lie close. Noting the watershed, he found the source of the beck which brawled through Elmdale, and tracked it back to the village. It was alive with trout and grayling, and his fingers itched for a rod. He regretted now that he had not obtained the names of some of the riparian landowners from Walker, but realized that the village inn would soon yield all the information he needed, and probably contain some of the farmers in person that evening.

He reached his new abode, however, somewhat later than he had intended, approaching it from the east, which afforded not only a new point of view, but enabled him to detect Mrs. Jackson and Betty in a series of manoeuvres which were distinctly mysterious when taken into account with their earlier attitude.

Obviously, when he emerged from the depths of the tree-lined gill, and first caught sight of the house, mother and daughter had just quitted the front door, presumably after knocking, and failing to obtain an answer. Betty ran out into the road, and gazed up towards the moor. Apparently satisfied by her scrutiny of that bare upland she hurried to the rear of the premises, and reappeared, carrying a gardener's ladder, which she placed against the wall. Giving a rapid glance in the direction of the village, she mounted the ladder. It was rather short, and she was in some danger of falling, but, by clinging to a creeper, she managed to reach a sufficient height that she could peer into the bedroom in which Armathwaite had spread his belongings.

She descended again swiftly, took away the ladder, and returned to her mother. Both women eyed the upper windows anxiously, and, as the outcome of some talk, Betty went to the gate a second time, and looked along the bold curve of the moorland road. She shook her head. Her mother joined her, and the two went to their cottage.

Armathwaite smiled, and resolved to keep his knowledge of the Jacksons' behavior to himself. He did not wish to quarrel with the women, who would be useful in many ways. In a day or two, when he had won their confidence, they would doubtless explain their queer proceedings; most likely, the explanation would prove so simple that it would never occur to a suspicious mind.

Having waited to fill his pipe, he entered the village, and walked up the narrow path to Mrs. Jackson's abode. He was met at the door by Betty. She seemed to be rather alarmed by the visit, yet pleased to see him.

"Can we do anything for you, sir?" she said. "Mother and I went to the house a while ago, but you were out."

In the oblique Yorkshire way she had partly told the reason of the visit. Mrs. Jackson, too, came and stood near her daughter, and it was curious to note the underlook of alarm, of poignant anxiety, in both faces.

"I wish to make your acquaintance, and to inquire about milk, butter, and eggs," he said pleasantly. "Mr. Walker suggested that you might be willing to attend to household matters, and that would take a burden off my mind."

"We'll be pleased to do it, and reasonable, too, sir," said Mrs. Jackson promptly.

"Very well. Come and see me in the morning. Meanwhile, can you arrange for a quart of milk, a pound of butter, and a few eggs to be sent in immediately?"

"Oh, yes, sir," said both together, and the expression of relief in the one face was mirrored in the other.

"You'll be wanting something cooked now, sir?" went on the older woman, with a new cheerfulness of tone, and Armathwaite would have been a far less capable student of human nature than he was had he failed to see that a much desired entry to the house was now regarded as an assured thing. Suddenly he made up his mind to solve the enigma, whatever it might be, since the theory of a spare bed being in request did not seem to fit the case.

"No," he said carelessly, treating the proposal as of slight import, one way or the other. "I wish to be alone this evening. But you can come in early to-morrow. Isn't there a spare key?"

"Yes, sir," broke in the girl, for her mother was utterly nonplussed again. "It's on the bunch with the others."

He produced the keys from his pocket, and saw that there were two alike.

"One of these?" he inquired, meeting the girl's eyes in a steady glance. Then he was sure of his ground. She was so excited that she could hardly answer. He gave her the key, ascertained that she would bring the milk and the rest in a few minutes, and left the two women staring after him.

Betty was as good as her word. She made no attempt to prolong her stay, but deposited her purchases on the hall-table, and promised that she or her mother would come about seven in the morning.

"Will you need to be called, sir?" she inquired, as an afterthought.

"Well, yes. I'm a sound sleeper," he assured her gravely.

The statement was true, but it required qualification. A man who had slept many a night under conditions that demanded instant wakefulness if any sinister sound threatened his very existence, did not rank in the class of sound sleepers known to quiet Elmdale.

Thereafter he cooked a meal of eggs and bacon, tea and toast, smoked, rambled in the garden, read, thought a good deal, and went to bed.

The light in his room was extinguished soon after ten o'clock. About half-past eleven, little more than twelve hours from the time he had first heard of "the house 'round the corner," he was aroused by a loud crash in the hall. He was up in an instant, laughing at the success of a booby trap compacted of the Burmese gong, some thread, and a piece of wood set as a trigger. His feet were not on the floor before the front door banged, and, hurrying to the window, he saw Betty Jackson flying down the path for dear life. He could not be mistaken. In that northern latitude a midsummer night is never wholly dark. He not only recognized the girl, but could note her heaving shoulders as she sobbed hysterically in her flight.

"I'm sorry if you're badly scared, my country maid, but you asked for it," he said aloud. "Now I think I'll be left to undisturbed slumber till seven o'clock."

Therein he erred. He had not quitted the window, being held by the solemn beauty of the gray landscape, ere a heavy thud, and then another, and yet a third, reached his ears. He might not have localized the first, but its successors came unmistakably from the attic. After a few seconds, the three knocks were repeated, and now he adjudged them to the precise bounds of the trap-door.

Slipping an automatic pistol into the pocket of his pyjama suit—merely as a precaution against the unforeseen, though he was a man devoid of fear, he took an electric torch from a drawer, but knew better than to bring it into use until its glare would disconcert others—not himself. He thrust his bare feet into slippers, unlocked the bedroom door, and passed out on to the landing.

"Now to unveil Isis!" he thought, as he felt for the first step of the upward stairway. It needed one of steel nerve and fine courage to creep about a strange house in the dark—a house where ill deeds had been done, and in which their memories lurked—but Robert Armathwaite had gone through experiences which reduced the present adventure to the proportions of a somewhat startling prank, closely akin to the success of the stratagem which had routed Betty Jackson.

And, as he mounted the stairs, keeping close to the wall, and thus preventing the old boards from creaking, again came those ominous knocks, louder, more insistent; but whether threatening or merely clamorous he could not decide—yet.

CHAPTER III

A MIDNIGHT SEANCE

Armathwaite had a foot on the upper landing when a stifled sob reached his ears, and a determined, almost angry, stamping or hammering shook the trap-door. One element, then, of the mystery attached to this reputedly ghost-ridden house was about to be dispelled. When James Walker shot the bolt which rendered the door as unyielding as the stout rafters which incased it, he had unwittingly imprisoned someone in the attic loft; and the someone, tiring of imprisonment, was making loud demand for release. Moreover, Betty Jackson was in the secret. She knew of the intruder's presence, but had not learnt the particular mode of concealment adopted—hence her renewed efforts to gain admission, her use of the ladder, and her somewhat daring visit during the dead hours of the night.

Now, Armathwaite scouted the notion of a couple of village women like Mrs. Jackson and her daughter being in league with midnight robbers, or worse. Even if some thievery was in prospect, they could not possibly have arranged that certain unknown miscreants should hide beneath the roof, since the arrival of Walker with an unexpected tenant was evidently the last thing they had dreamed of.

Therefore, smiling at the humor of the incident, he had to simulate a sternness he was far from feeling when he cried:

"Stop making that noise! Who are you, and how did you come to get yourself locked in in this way?"

"Please let me out!" came the muffled reply. "I'll explain everything—I will, indeed!"

Thereupon, Armathwaite was more surprised than ever. The appeal, though tearful and husky, was precisely opposite in character to that which he anticipated. He looked for gruff entreaty in the accents of the country of broad acres. What he actually heard was a cultured voice, a voice with a singularly soft and musical enunciation, and its note was of complaint rather than petition.

"All right!" he cried, hardly suppressing a laugh. "I'll bring a chair and draw the bolt. I suppose you can lower the ladder yourself?"

"Of course I can—I drew it up!"

Again, the answer did not fit in with the conditions. But Armathwaite secured the same chair which Walker had used, pressed the button of the electric torch, and, having forced the bolt out of its socket, raised the door a few inches.

"Catch hold!" he said. "I'll show you a light."

The door was lifted, and he glimpsed a beardless face peering from the inner void. He sprang to the floor, put the chair on one side, and awaited developments. Soon the ladder appeared, and was adjusted. Then came two neat but strong brown brogues, with slim-ankled black stockings to match, and the turned-up ends of a pair of gray, flannel trousers. The owner of these articles of attire sat for an instant on the edge of the trap, as though reluctant to descend further, and Armathwaite noticed, to his very great bewilderment, that the black stockings were of silk.

"Will you kindly promise not to grab my legs as I come down?" said the voice.

"I have not the slightest desire to grab your legs, or your neck, for that matter, if you behave yourself," said Armathwaite.

"You don't understand, of course," came the curiously dignified protest; "but I am not misbehaving myself, and have no intention of so doing. This ridiculous thing would not have happened if that silly young fop had not fastened the trap-door. I can't imagine why he did it. It was no business of his, at any rate. And may I ask who you are?"

"I'll answer all polite inquiries, and, it may be, put a few on my own account, when you favor me with a closer view," said Armathwaite, not without a tinge of sarcasm in his politeness.

"Oh, this is too stupid for words!" was the petulant reply, and the speaker swung into sight. The ladder was tilted steeply, and the steps were narrow. Apparently, the young gentleman in a gray flannel suit who materialized in this manner preferred to gaze at his rescuer rather than adopt the safer method of descent which involved a momentary turning of his back. Possibly, too, he was more nervous than his remarks betokened, for he was yet some distance from the floor when the lower-most foot slipped, and he fell. The toe of the other foot caught in a rung, and he was thrown violently into Armathwaite's arms, who, to save him from pitching headlong downstairs, had to clutch him with some force, whereupon the torch dropped, and the two were enfolded by a pall of darkness that seemed to have an actual quality of tangibleness.

"Oh!" shrieked the youth, now thoroughly frightened, "please don't hurt me! I haven't done anything wrong. I haven't really!"

Armathwaite's senses were steeped in the very essence of wonderment; he knew now that he was clasping a woman to his breast, hugging her most energetically, too, and the knowledge was at once disconcerting and irritating. But he had acquired the faculty long ago of remaining impassive in circumstances calling for rigid self-control, so he merely said, with curt reassurance:

"If you'll not make such a row, and stand still, I'll find that confounded torch and shed a light on the situation."

He stooped, and groped on the floor, being aware that the girl was panting with ill-repressed alarm the while. Luckily, his fingers soon closed on the nickel cylinder, and the almost overwhelming gloom was banished.

"Do you think you can manage to walk downstairs without stumbling, or shall I hold your arm?" he inquired, and the somewhat taunting question, no less than his obvious disregard of his companion's terror, supplied a needed tonic.

"The ladder was steep and slippery," she said tremulously. "The stairs offer no difficulty, so I can dispense with your assistance, thanks."

Certainly this young person's way of expressing herself differed in every essential from her distinctly agitated state. She was not yet aware of the innate chivalry of the man in refraining from thrusting the torch close to her face and staring at her, but already her panic was subsiding, and she turned and hurried away so quickly that Armathwaite thought she meant to escape.

"Just one moment!" he said, though not making the least effort to detain her otherwise. "Are there any more of you up here?"

His sheer unconcern could not fail to lessen her agitation still further, and she halted on the next landing.

"What do you mean?" she cried. Despite her qualms, she still maintained a curious attitude of defiance, as if she, and not the house's lawful tenant, had most cause to feel aggrieved.

"Exactly what I said. Were you alone in that attic?"

"Of course I was. What a question!"

"A natural one, from my point of view. I was sound asleep, when your ally, Betty Jackson, kicked up a din in the hall, and you began pounding on the trap-door."

"Poor Betty! Is she here? Betty! Betty!"

Leaning over the banisters, she peered into the blackness beneath. There was a glimmer of spectral light here, for a late-rising moon was adding to the silvery brightness of a perfect night, and some of its radiance was piercing the stained glass. Armathwaite noted her action with increasing bewilderment.

"Betty fled as though she were pursued by seven devils," he said, when no other answer came to her cry. "I guessed at some mischief being afoot, so planned a surprise for anyone crossing the hall without my knowledge. No matter what her earlier opinions, Betty believes in that ghost now."

"Ghost! What ghost? There is no ghost here. Do you think to scare me with a bogey, like a naughty child?"

They were descending the broad stairs of the lower flight together, and Armathwaite had stolen one glance at the lissom young figure. He was minded to smile at a cunningly-hidden safety pin which kept a broad-brimmed fisherman's hat of heather mixture cloth in position so that the girl's hair was concealed. The coat hung rather loosely on slender shoulders, but the disguise was fairly effective in other respects, and the masquerader moved with an easy grace that betokened a good walker.

"I have not occupied the house many hours, but I have come to the conclusion that it harbors certain strange fantasies," he said, taking the lead, and stopping to break a thread stretched across the foot of the stairs. "We'll find a lamp and matches in the dining-room," he added. "Suppose we go there and discuss matters?"

"Isn't it rather late? Whatever time is it?" was the hesitating comment.

"And aren't you rather hungry?" he replied, ignoring both questions.

"I'm simply ravenous. I haven't eaten a morsel since six o'clock this morning."

"I can offer you bread and butter and milk. Shall I boil you some eggs?"

"If you mention food again, I shall drop. Please, what time is it?"

"Nearly midnight."

"Oh, I must be going! I must, really. The Jacksons will find me something to eat."

"You're going into that room, and, unless I have your promise to remain there, you'll accompany me to the kitchen. Which is it to be—a comfortable chair, with a lamp, or a compulsory prowl through kitchen and larder?"

"I'll sit down, please," came the slow admission. "I'm very tired, and rather done up. I walked miles and miles this morning, and the long hours up there in the dark were horrid."

Without another word Armathwaite threw open the dining-room door, and lighted the lamp which he had left on the table. The girl sank wearily into an arm-chair; her action was a tacit acceptance of his terms. Somehow, he was convinced that she would not take advantage of his absence and slip out through the front door, which Betty Jackson had assuredly not waited to lock.

Among the kitchen utensils he had found a small oil-stove in working order. In a surprisingly short time, therefore, he was back in the dining-room with a laden tray.

"Do you like your eggs soft-boiled, medium, or hard?" he inquired, treating an extraordinary episode with a nonchalance which betokened either a temperament wholly devoid of emotion or a career crowded with uncommon experiences.

"Need I eat eggs at all?" said the girl. "I'm sure, Mrs. Jackson——"

"Do you want to rouse the village?"

"No; anything but that."

"Then I must point out that the one cottage in Elmdale whose inmates will be deaf and dumb at this moment is Mrs. Jackson's. Both mother and daughter are quaking because of the possible consequences of an attempt to enter this house at an hour which no person could choose for a legitimate purpose. Eat and drink, therefore. We'll deal with the Jacksons subsequently. No, don't begin by a long draught of milk. It is tempting, but harmful if taken in that way. Try some bread and butter. Now, two eggs. Oh, dash it! I've forgotten an egg-spoon, and I don't know where such things are kept. I'll go and hunt for them."

"Don't trouble. Lend me that electric lamp—how useful it is!—and I'll bring one in a minute."

By this time Armathwaite had seen that his captive was a remarkably pretty girl. Male attire supplies the severest test of feminine beauty, since form and feature are deprived of adventitious aids; but a small, oval face, two pouting lips, a finely-modeled nose, brilliant brown eyes, swept by long curved lashes, and a smooth forehead, rising above arched and well-marked eyebrows, needed no art of milliner or dressmaker to enhance their charms. She was fairly tall, too—though dwarfed by Armathwaite's six feet and an inch of height in his slippered feet—and admirably proportioned, if slender and lithe. Evidently, she thought he had not penetrated her disguise, and was momentarily becoming more self-possessed. Again, she had some explanation of her presence in the house which could not fail of acceptance, and did not scruple, therefore, to display a close acquaintance with its arrangements denied to one who admittedly had taken up his abode there only that day.

The man listened to her quick, confident steps going to the kitchen, heard the rattle of a drawer in an antique dresser which stood there, and, with an emphatic gesture, seemed to appeal to the gods ere he bent over the stove to see if the water was yet a-boil.

The girl might be hungry, but feminine curiosity proved stronger than the urgent claims of an empty stomach. She went into the larder, and undoubtedly eyed the new tenant's stores. She implied as much when she re-entered the dining-room.

"Boiled eggs require pepper and salt," she explained. "You've got so many little paper bags that I didn't dare rummage among them, so I've secured a cruet which was left here when my—when the people who used to live here went away. The salt may be a bit damp, but the pepper should be all right."

Without more ado she tackled a slice of bread, breaking it into small pieces, and buttering each piece separately before munching it.

"Some wise person said in a newspaper the other day that one ought to give every mouthful of bread three hundred bites," she went on. "I wonder if he ever fasted eighteen hours before practicing his own precept. I'm afraid I wouldn't believe him if he said he did."

"People who study their digestion generally die young," said Armathwaite drily.

"Oh, I don't agree with you in that," she retorted. "My dad is great on food theories. He knows all about proteins and carbohydrates; he can tell you to a fourth decimal the caloric value of an egg; and he's a phenomenally healthy person. By the way, how are those eggs coming on?"

"Try this one. I think the water has been boiling three minutes!"

Armathwaite spoke calmly enough, but a stoutly-built edifice of circumstantial evidence had just crumbled in ruins about his ears. He was persuaded that, for some reason best known to herself, Miss Marguérite Garth had adopted this freakish method of revisiting her old home. Such a thesis made all things plausible. It explained her singularly self-contained pose, her knowledge of the house's contents, her wish to remain hidden from prying eyes, and, last but not least, it brought the peculiar conduct of the Jackson family into a commonplace category, for the two women would be governed by a clannish feeling which is almost as powerful in rural Yorkshire as in Scotland. A girl who had lived nearly all her life in the village would be looked on as a native. She might appeal confidently for their help and connivance in such a matter.

But this girl's father was alive, and Marguérite Garth's father had been in a suicide's grave two years. Who, then, was the audacious young lady now assuring him that he could boil eggs admirably? He was puzzled anew, almost piqued, because he flattered himself on a faculty for guessing accurately at the contents of a good many closed pages in a human document after a glance at the outer cover and its endorsement. He was spurred to fresh endeavor. He wanted to solve this riddle before its baffling intricacies were made plain by the all-satisfying statement which his companion obviously had it in mind to give.

"Won't you remove your hat?" he said, thinking to perplex her by a mischievous request.

"No, thanks," she said blithely. "I'll just demolish this second egg. Then I'll tell you why I am here, and awaken Mrs. Jackson, no matter what her neighbors may think. But, why wait? I can eat and talk—put the facts in an eggshell, so to speak. My relatives own this house. Mr. Garth has long wanted a few books and knick-knacks, and I've come to get them. Some are collected already on the library table; the remainder I'll gather in the morning, with your permission. But I don't wish my visit to be known to others than Mrs. Jackson and Betty, and that is why I retreated to the loft when you and Mr. Walker arrived. It was a bother that anyone should select this day in particular to visit the property; but I imagined you would go away in an hour or so. Even when that vain young person, James Walker, locked me in, I believed Betty would come and release me after your departure. Besides, I wouldn't for worlds have let Walker see me. I—er—dislike him too much."

Armathwaite allowed to pass without comment her real motive for refusing to meet sharp-eyed James Walker; but again the problem of her identity called insistently for solution. If she was not Marguérite Garth, who on earth was she?

"Let me understand," he began. "The owner, and former occupant, of this house, was Mr. Stephen Garth?"

"Is," she corrected. "It remains his property, though he is living elsewhere."

Armathwaite so far forgot himself as to whistle softly between his teeth. And, indeed, such momentary impoliteness might be excused by his bewilderment. If Stephen Garth, who had owned and occupied the Grange, was still living, who was the man whose ghost had excited Elmdale, and driven back to prosaic Sheffield a certain Mrs. Wilkins, of nervous disposition and excitable habit?

"Ah!" he said judicially. "Messrs. Walker & Son, of Nuttonby, are his agents and Messrs. Holloway & Dobb, also of Nuttonby, his solicitors?"

"I suppose so," said the girl, deep in the second egg.

"But I understood that Mr. Stephen Garth had only one child, a daughter."

"Isn't he allowed to have a nephew, or an assorted lot of cousins?"

"Such contingencies are permissible, but they don't meet the present case."

"Why not?"

"Because, my dear young lady, anyone with half an eye in their head could see that you are a girl masquerading in a man's clothes. Now, who are you? I am entitled to ask. I have certain legal rights as the tenant of this house during the forthcoming three months, and as you have broken the law in more ways than you imagine, perhaps, I want to be enlightened before I condone your various offenses."

The girl was holding a glass of milk to her lips, and drank slowly until the glass was emptied; but her eyes met Armathwaite's over the rim, and they were dilated with apprehension, for a heedless prank was spreading into realms she had never dreamed of.

"Does it really matter who I am?" she managed to say quietly, though there was a pitiful flutter in her voice, and the hand which replaced the tumbler on the table shook perceptibly.

"Yes, it matters a great deal," he said. With a generosity that was now beginning to dawn on her, he averted his gaze, and scrutinized a colored print on the wall.

"But why?" she persisted.

"Because I am convinced that you are Mr. Stephen Garth's daughter."

She drew a deep breath, and he was aware instantly that she was hovering on the verge of candid confession. She moved uneasily, propped her elbows on the table, and concealed some part of her features by placing her clenched fists against her cheeks.

"Well, what if I am?" she said at last, with a touch of the earlier defiance in her voice.

"Are you? Please answer outright."

"Yes."

"And your father is alive?"

"Of course he is!"

"Mother, too?"

"Yes."

"Do they know you are here?"

"No. For some reason, they have taken a dislike to Elmdale, and hardly ever mention it, or the Grange, for that matter. Yet my poor old dad is such a creature of habit that he is always missing something—a book, a favorite picture, a bit of china, and I schemed to come here, pack a few of the articles he most values, and have them sent to our cottage in Cornwall. Once they're there, they couldn't very well be sent back, could they? But as my people have forbidden me ever to speak of or come near Elmdale, I didn't quite know how to manage it, until I hit on the notion of impersonating Percy Whittaker, the brother of a friend with whom I have been staying in Cheshire. Percy would do anything for me, but there was no sense in sending him, was there? He would be sure to bungle things awfully, so I borrowed his togs, and traveled all night to a station on the other side of the moor—and nobody—thought—I was—a girl—except you—and Betty, of course. She—knew me—at once."

"For goodness' sake, don't cry. I believe you—every word. But did you travel from Cheshire in that rig-out?"

"No, oh, no! I wore a mackintosh, and a lady's hat. They're hanging in the hall. I took them off while crossing the moor."

"A mackintosh!"

"Yes. Don't be horrid! I turned up my trousers, of course."

"I'm not being horrid. I want to help you. You walked—how many miles?"

"Fourteen."

"And breakfasted at York?"

"Yes. You see, Betty would have brought me some lunch. Then you came."

"The bedroom was prepared for your use, then?"

"Yes. It's my room, really. Dad likes to sleep with his head to the west, and that is where the door is in that room."

"Poor girl! I would have given a good deal that this thing should not have happened. But we must make the best of a bad job. Now, I hope you'll accept my advice. Let me go upstairs and remove the clothes I shall need in the morning. Then you retire there, lock the door, and sleep well till Betty comes."

"Oh, I can't! You are very kind, but I must go to Mrs. Jackson now."

She had blushed and paled in alternate seconds. Half rising, she sank back into the chair again; though the table was between them, the wearing of a boy's clothes was not quite so easy a matter as it had seemed earlier. The one thing she did not guess was that this serious-faced man was far more troubled by thoughts of a reputed ghost than by an escapade which now loomed large in her mind.

"I'm half inclined to make you obey me," he said angrily, gazing at her now with fixed and troubled eyes.

"But you've been so good and kind," she almost sobbed. "Why should you be vexed with me now? I've told you the truth, I have, indeed."

"That is precisely the reason why I am sure you ought not to risk arousing the village to-night."

"But I won't. I'll tap at the window. Betty knows I'm here, somewhere, and she'll let me in at once."

Armathwaite was at his wits end to decide on the sanest course. A man less versed than he in the complexities of life would have counseled her retreat to the cottage as the only practicable means of escape from a position bristling with difficulties; but some subtle and intuitive sense warned him that Marguérite Garth should, if possible, leave Elmdale without the knowledge which credited that house with a veritable ghost.

"It's long after midnight," he persisted. "I'll have a snooze in a chair, and meet Betty Jackson before you show up. You can trust me absolutely to explain things to her."

"You forget that she is worrying dreadfully about me. Please let me go!"

"Very well," he said, driven to the half measures he had learnt to detest. "Promise me this—that you'll go straight to bed, and come here for breakfast without any conversation with the Jacksons."

The girl showed her relief, not unmixed with surprise at a strangely-worded stipulation.

"I'll do that," she said, after a little pause.

"Mind you—no talk. Just 'Good-night, I'm dead tired,' and that sort of thing."

"Yes," she agreed again, wonderingly.

"And the same in the morning?"

"I'll do my best."

"Off with you, then! I'll come to the door, and stand there, in case you're challenged by anybody."

"There's little fear of that in Elmdale at this hour," she said, with a new cheerfulness. He turned, ostensibly to pick up the electric torch. She was out in the hall instantly; when he rejoined her she was wearing the mackintosh.

"Good-night!" she said. "Next to dad, you're the nicest man I've ever met, and I don't even know your name."

"I'll introduce myself at breakfast," he growled, extinguishing the torch as he opened the door. He watched her swift run down the curving path to the gate, and heard her footsteps as she hurried into the village street. The night was so still that he knew when she turned into the front garden of the cottage, and he caught the tapping on a window, which, beginning timidly, soon grew more emphatic, perhaps more desperate.

Some minutes passed. He could see the back of the cottage, and no gleam of light shone in any of its tiny windows. Then followed some decided thumping on a door, but the tenement might have been an empty barn for all the response that was forthcoming.

Finally, he was aware of slow feet climbing dejectedly up the hill, and the garden gate creaked.

"I can't make anybody hear," wailed a tearful voice.

Armathwaite was even more surprised than the girl at this dramatic verification of his prophecy, but he availed himself of it as unscrupulously as any Delphic oracle.

"I told you so," he said. "Now, come in and go to bed!"

CHAPTER IV

SHOWING HOW EXPLANATIONS DO NOT ALWAYS EXPLAIN

Though weary and distrait, Marguérite Garth was of too frank a disposition to allow such an extraordinary incident to pass without comment. She halted in the porch by Armathwaite's side, and gazed blankly at the silent cottage.

"You spoke of a ghost," she murmured brokenly. "I'm beginning to think myself that I am bewitched. What can have happened? Why won't Betty or her mother let me in?"

"I'll have much pleasure in clearing up that trivial mystery about eight o'clock in the morning," he said with due gravity, fearing lest any attempt to relieve the situation by a joke might have the disastrous effect often achieved by a would-be humorist when a perplexed woman on the verge of tears is the subject of his wit. "Now, if you'll wait in the dining-room till I collect my garments, you'll be in bed and asleep within five minutes."

He gave her no further opportunity for argument or protestation. Closing and locking the door, he left the key in the lock, whereas, by virtue of the arrangement with Betty Jackson, it had reposed previously on the hall-table. In a few seconds he bustled in with an armful of clothes and a pair of boots. Handing over the torch, he said cheerfully:

"Now, leave everything to me, and you'll be astonished to find how all your woes will vanish by daylight. Good-night, and sleep well!"

Then the girl did a strange thing. She held the torch close to his face, and looked at him unflinchingly.

"I am very fortunate in having met a man like you," she said, and, without another word, turned and mounted the stairs. He waited until the bedroom door closed, and listened for the click of a lock, but listened in vain.

"It would appear that I'm still able to win the confidence of children and dogs," he muttered, smiling grimly. Then he made a pillow of his clothes on a couch beneath the window, and, such was the force of habit, was asleep quite soon. A glint of sunlight reflected from the glass in a picture woke him at four o'clock. After glancing at his watch, he slept again, and was aroused the next time by the crunch of feet on the graveled path outside. He was at the door while Betty Jackson was yet trying to insert the key which she had withdrawn and pocketed overnight.

He admitted her, and said good-humoredly:

"I came downstairs when you ran away from a goblin gong, leaving the door unlocked. I don't suppose we are in danger of burglary in Elmdale, but it is customary to take reasonable precautions."

Betty, who was carrying a jug of milk, flushed till her cheeks resembled a ripe russet apple. Denial was useless, but she tried to wriggle.

"I didn't mean any harm, sir," she said. "I only wanted to have a look around. The house is so upset."

"Put that milk on the dining-room table," he said.

She obeyed, glad that a dreaded ordeal seemed to have ended ere it had well begun. Armathwaite followed, and closed the dining-room door. What he really feared was that she might drop the jug, and that the resultant crash would awaken his guest before Betty and he had engaged in a heart-to-heart talk.

"Now," he said, raising the blind, and flooding the room with clear morning light, "I take you for a sensible girl, Betty."

"I hope I am, sir," she answered shyly.

"Have you quite recovered from your fright?"

"Yes, sir."

She reddened again, thinking she knew what was coming. She could have dealt with Walker, but glib pertness would not avail when this tall stranger's eyes were piercing her very soul. Nevertheless, his tone was gentle and reassuring—at first.

"I was ignorant of the real facts, you see, so I had to defend myself," he said. "I know the truth now. Miss Garth is upstairs and asleep. She heard the commotion caused by the gong, and could not endure the strain and loneliness of that dark garret any longer—"

"Was Miss Meg there—in the loft?" cried Betty, blurting out the first vague thought that occurred to her bemused brain, because those words, "Miss Garth is upstairs and asleep," swamped her understanding with a veritable torrent of significance.

"Yes. She hid there when Mr. Walker and I entered the house, and, by the merest chance, she was fastened in. She remained there twelve hours."

"Oh, poor thing! She'd be nearly clemmed to death."

In Yorkshire, "clemmed" means "starved," and "starved" means "perished with cold." Armathwaite could follow many of the vernacular phrases, and this one did not bother him.

"She was hungry, without doubt," he said, "but I did not send her supperless to bed. Now, I have various questions to put before you go to her room, and I want straightforward, honest answers. If I am told the truth, I shall know how to act for the best in Miss Garth's interests; and that is what you wish, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes, sir! I'm sure none of us had any notion of doing wrong."

"Don't speak so loudly. I want no explanations of your behavior yesterday. It would have been wise had you trusted in me at once, but that was hardly to be expected, seeing that I was a man fallen from the moon.... Why didn't you let Miss Garth enter when she knocked at your window and the door last night?"

The girl's eyes opened wide in sheer distress.

"Oh, sir!" she almost whispered; "what time did she come?"

"About midnight."

"There now! I half fancied that such a thing might happen. When I ran home, sir, I was fair scairt, because there has been talk of a ghost, and I wasn't too keen about coming in here in the dark. But mother was worried, and wouldn't go to bed. She would have it that Miss Meg had got clear of the house, and was hiding in a shed at the top of the lane. So, after a lot of talk, mother and I went there together. There was a light in the dining-room as we passed, but it had gone out when we came back."

"Solvitur ambulando," muttered the man, smiling at the simple solution of an occurrence which had puzzled him greatly at the time.

"What's that, sir?" demanded Betty.

"Sorry. I was thinking aloud—a bad habit. Those two Latin words mean that your walk to the shed disposes of a difficulty. Now for the next item, Betty. Miss Meg, as you call her, is the young lady who lived here a good many years?"

"She was born here, sir. She and I are nearly of an age—twenty-two, each of us."

"And her father was Mr. Stephen Garth?"

"Yes, sir."

"But isn't he dead?"

"Oh, yes, sir! Dead and buried two years this very month."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir. Mother was the first who saw his dead body. She was nearly frightened into a fit."

"Tell me the exact facts."

"Well, sir, Mrs. Garth and Miss Meg went away, all of a sudden. There was no quarrel that we know of, and Mr. Garth himself helped a man to carry out their boxes. They kissed on parting at the gate. I myself heard him saying that he would join them as soon as he had finished some book he was busy with. He was a great man for writing and studying, and he'd walk ten miles to get some granny's tale about dales ways, and the things people used to do in the old times. But no sooner had they left him than he changed. We all noticed it. He paid off the gardener, and dismissed two maids, and lived here alone. That didn't last long. I used to bring eggs and milk and things, and he'd take them in at the door. He'd talk pleasantly enough, but he looked awful worried. Then, one morning, I couldn't make anybody hear, and I thought he had gone out early. About seven o'clock that evening mother went and knocked, but there was no answer. Next morning it was the same; but when mother and I tried again in the evening, we noticed that the curtain, which can be drawn across the glass top of the door, had been pulled aside. At the inquest they wanted to know if it had been in the same position when we were there before, but we couldn't be certain, though we thought it must have been drawn. Anyhow, mother looked in, and ran away screaming, and I ran after her, not knowing why. In a minute or two she was able to speak, and said she had seen Mr. Garth hanging near the clock. Some men went, and they saw him clearly, and one of them, Mr. Benson, rode to Bellerby for the policeman. He came in about an hour, and broke open the door, and cut poor Mr. Garth down. He had been dead a long time, the doctor said, and the worst thing was that nobody could find Mrs. Garth and Miss Meg. Not that any blame could be laid to them, because Mr. Garth himself said so in a letter addressed 'To the Coroner,' which was laid at the foot of the clock. We have a weekly paper in the cottage, sir, and you can see the whole account there."

"Get that paper, and give it to me privately sometime to-day," said Armathwaite. "Meanwhile, your story is ample for my present purpose. Were you surprised at seeing Miss Garth yesterday?"

"Sir, you could have knocked me down with a feather. And she in a man's clothes, and all. She came over the moor about ten o'clock—"

"Never mind the details now. Did she speak of her father?"

"In a sort of a way, sir."

"Did she give you the impression that he was still living?"

"Now that you mention it, sir, she did, but I couldn't quite understand what she said, and thought, for sure, I was mistaken. It wasn't the kind of thing one might ask questions about—was it, sir?"

"No, indeed. Knowing he had committed suicide, you didn't like to hurt her feelings?"

"That's it, sir, exactly."

"You hadn't much talk, I take it?"

"No, sir. She was all of a shake with excitement, and wanted to be let into the house before anyone else in the village could see her. I was to leave her alone till one o'clock, she said. Then I was to bring her something to eat, and we'd have a long chat. And that's the last I've seen of her, sir."

It has been noted that Armathwaite was no lover of the middle way in dealing with the hazards of existence. In fact, strength of will and inflexibility of purpose had already driven him from place and power to the haven of retirement, which he imagined he would find in Elmdale. He had made up his mind overnight as to the handling of the problem set by Marguérite Garth's presence in her father's house, and he saw no reason now why he should depart from the decision reached then.

"You've been very candid, Betty Jackson," he said, looking steadily into the girl's wondering eyes, "and I mean to be equally outspoken with you. For some cause, which I cannot fathom, and may never inquire into, Miss Garth is not only unaware of any recent death in her family, but is convinced that her father is alive and well. There is a flaw in the argument somewhere, but it is hardly my business, nor yours, to discover the weak spot. Now, I propose that we let the young lady leave Elmdale as happy in her belief, or her ignorance, as she entered it. In plain English, I suggest that neither you, nor I, nor your mother, say one syllable about the suicide of Mr. Stephen Garth. If his daughter believes he is living, we should be hard put to it to convince her that he is dead."

"He is dead, sir. I saw him in his coffin," said Betty earnestly.

"I am not disputing your statement. My sole consideration, at this moment, is the happiness of the girl now lying asleep upstairs. Suppose, within the next hour or two, she says something about the surprise her father will receive when he sees some of the books and other articles she means to send to her present home, are you going to tell her that she is utterly mistaken—that Mr. Garth has been dead and buried—that she is talking like a lunatic?"

"Oh, no, sir! I wouldn't dream of speaking that way to Miss Meg."

"But don't you see, it has to be either one thing or the other. Either you accept her view that her father is alive, or you are constantly acting in a way that must arouse her suspicions. And, if once she begins to question you, what will happen then? You'll be in a ten times more difficult position than if you convince yourself, for the time being, that you were dreaming when you saw some man in a coffin."

"But I wasn't," persisted Betty. "Why, sir, the whole village knows——"

"I'm not doubting your word in the least. The point at issue is this—do you mean to perplex and worry Miss Meg by informing her that her father hanged himself in the hall of this very house two years ago?"

"No, sir. That I don't."

"You promise that?"

"Oh, yes, sir."

"I'm glad you've come to my way of thinking. Miss Garth will leave here to-day, or to-morrow, at the latest. Till then, you must keep guard over your tongue. Go now, and tell your mother what I have told you. Make her understand the facts most clearly. If she agrees to help you and me in this matter, she is to come here and take up a housekeeper's duties. I'll pay her and you well for your services, but my instructions must be carried out to the letter. If she refuses, or feels unable, to obey my wishes in this matter, she is not to cross the threshold. Do you understand that fully?"

Armathwaite could be tersely emphatic in speech and manner when he chose. He had taken Betty Jackson into his confidence, but he had also expressed his intentions in a way that left her in no doubt as to the result if any lack of discretion on her part, or her mother's, led to a crisis. He had gauged the situation to a nicety. Mrs. Jackson and her daughter were well disposed towards Marguérite Garth, but there was no harm in stilling their tongues through the forceful medium of self-interest.

When the two came back together within a few minutes he knew that he had swept immediate obstacles from the path. Mrs. Jackson was a shrewd Yorkshire woman, and needed no blare of trumpets to inform her on which side her bread was buttered.

"Good morning, sir," she cried cheerfully. "Betty has told me what you said, and I think you're quite right. What time do you want breakfast, and what'll you have cooked?"

Armathwaite nodded his satisfaction.

"We three will get along famously," he laughed. "Now, Betty, put some water in one of the bedrooms, and, when you call Miss Garth, get my dressing-case, which is on the table, and bring it to me. She will answer your mother's questions about breakfast. Any hour that suits her will suit me. And let us all look as pleasant as though there wasn't such a thing as a ghost within a thousand miles of Elmdale."

The chance phrase reminded him of the elder Walker's words: "Elmdale is eight miles from Nuttonby, and thousands from every other town." Yet, remote as was this moor-edge hamlet, a sordid tragedy had been enacted there. Someone had died in that house under circumstances which called imperatively for a most searching inquiry. A daylight phantom had replaced the grim specter which credulous villagers were wont to see on a summer's eve. Was it his business to exorcise the evil spirit? He did not know. He closed his eyes resolutely to that side of the difficulty. Marguérite Garth must be sent on her way first; then he would make a guarded investigation into the history of the man whom Mrs. Jackson had seen "hanging near the clock."

When summoned to the dining-room he received a shock. Man-like, he had pictured his unbidden guest as he had seen her the previous night. Now he was greeted by a smiling and prepossessed young lady, who had extracted a muslin gown from the stock in the wardrobe, and whose piquant face was crowned by a wealth of brown hair. The presence of woman's chief adornment naturally enhanced the girl's remarkable beauty. In defiance, too, of certain modern laws of hygiene—or perhaps because she couldn't help it, being built that way—she had a very slim waist. Last night she would have passed in a crowd for a boy of slender physique; this morning she was adorably feminine. During fifteen years of strenuous work in the East, Armathwaite had never given a thought to the opposite sex. He had seen little of his country-women, for the Indian frontier is not a haven for married officers, and he personally would have regarded a wife as a positive hindrance to his work; so it was a singular fact that his first reflection now should be that a certain Percy Whittaker, whom, in all probability, he would never set eyes on, was a person to be envied. He almost scowled at the absurdity of the notion, and the girl, extending her hand, caught the fleeting expression.

"Aren't you pleased to see me?" she cried. "I made sure you were aching for my appearance. Betty tells me you were up and about before she arrived, and I have been an unconscionable time dressing; you must be pining for breakfast."

"You shall not rob me of a chance of saying that I am glad to see you by that unnecessary tag about breakfast," he said.

"But isn't it an awful bore to find you have a girl lodger? Poor man! You hire a house in the country for a fishing holiday, and fate condemns you to play host!"

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares," he quoted.

"Is that from Proverbs?"

"No. It occurs in a certain epistle to the Hebrews."

She knitted her brows.

"I thought so," she said. "I'm rather good at Proverbs, and I don't remember that one. If you meant to give me a nasty knock you might have reminded me that it is better to dwell in a corner of the house-top than with a brawling woman in a wide house.... Do you like coffee, or tea?"

"Both."

"Mixed? Mrs. Jackson didn't know your tastes, so I told her to be extravagant."

"I'll try the coffee, please."

It was an odd sensation to find himself seated at table with such a vivacious companion. Marguérite Garth had evidently banished her overnight experiences into the limbo of yesterday's seven thousand years. She could not have smiled more gayly, or been more at ease with a friend of long standing.

"Betty and I have been exchanging impressions about you," she rattled on. "We agree that you're not half so severe as you look. But I'm not such a marvelous guesser as you are, so, will you tell me what I'm to call you?"

"Bob."

"Mr. Bob?"

"I don't mean that my name rhymes with Lobb, or Dobb or Hobb. Bob is a diminutive of Robert."

"But Robert what?"

"No, just Bob."

"Don't be silly. You must have another name."

"The name on Mr. Walker's register is such a mouthful—Armathwaite, if you will have it."

"What a queer way to put it! 'On Mr. Walker's register.' Isn't it your real name?"

"There! I was sure you would say that. Why not be content with blunt and honest-sounding Bob?"

"Shall we establish a sort of cousinship? You're Bob and I'm Meg."

"That would be a most excellent beginning, Meg."

She laughed delightedly.

"We're having quite an adventure!" she cried. "It sounds like a chapter out of an exciting novel. I hope you didn't think I was rude about your other name—the long one—Bob! You see, I used to be Meg Garth, but now I'm Meg Ogilvey. I'm hardly accustomed to the Ogilvey yet, but I rather like it. Don't you?"

Armathwaite's face darkened, and he swallowed a piece of bacon without giving it even one of the twenty-nine bites recommended by dietists as a minimum.

"Why, that makes you look at me black as thunder," she vowed. "It's a quite simple matter. My people came into some money when we left Elmdale, and the Ogilvey was part of the legacy. It reaches us from the maternal side of the family, and the change was easy enough for dad, because he always wrote under the pen-name of Stephen Ogilvey."

"Stephen Ogilvey—the man who is an authority on folk-lore?"

The genuine surprise in his voice evidently pleased his hearer.

"Yes. How thrilling that you should recognize him! That is real fame, isn't it?—to be regarded as top-dog in your particular line. But you seemed to be angry when I told you about it."

"I thought you were married," he said, secretly quaking at his own temerity.

Again she knitted her brows in a rather fascinating effort to appear sagacious.

"I don't quite see——" she began. Then she stopped suddenly.

"You think that if I were married I wouldn't be quite such a tom-boy—is that it?" she went on.

"No. You've failed so badly in your interpretation of my thought that I dare hardly tell you its true meaning."

"Please do. I hate to misunderstand people."

"Well, I'll try and explain. You have not forgotten, I hope, that I have already described you as an angel?"

"Your quotation wasn't a bit more applicable than mine."

"Be that as it may, I cannot imagine an angel married. Can you?"

"Good gracious! Am I to remain single all my life?"

"Who am I that I should choose between an angel and Meg Ogilvey?"

"I wouldn't limit your choice so narrowly," she said, eluding his point with ease. "Besides, I've been expecting every minute to hear that there is a Mrs. Armathwaite."

"There isn't!"

"I'm sorry. I wish there was, and that she was here now. Then, if she was nice, and you wouldn't have married her if she wasn't, she would ask me to stay a few days. And I would say 'Yes, please.' As it is, I must hurry over my packing, and take myself back to Cheshire."

"Yes," said he, compelling the words. "There is no doubt about that. You cannot remain here."

"Well, you needn't hammer in the fact that you'll be glad to be rid of me. Have some more coffee?"

A heavy step sounded on the path without. The girl, who was seated with her back to the window, turned and looked out.

"Here's Tom Bland, the Nuttonby carrier," she cried excitedly, smiling and nodding at some person visible only to herself. "Dear old Tom! Won't he be surprised at seeing me!"

Armathwaite's wandering wits were suddenly and sharply recalled to the extraordinary situation confronting him.

"You don't mean that some local man has recognized you?" he growled, and the note of real annoyance in his voice brought a wondering glance from the girl.

"We gazed straight at one another, at any rate," she said, with a perceptible stiffening of manner. "Considering that Tom knows me as well as I know him, it would be stupid to pretend that neither of us knows the other. It would be useless where Tom is concerned, at any rate. He grinned all over his face, so I may as well go to the door and have a word with him."

"You'll do nothing of the sort," said Armathwaite, springing to his feet, and upsetting a plate in his hurry. "If Tom Bland says he has seen you here, I'll tell him he's several varieties of a liar. At this moment Marguérite Garth simply doesn't exist. She's a myth. The lady in this room is Meg Ogilvey, whom Tom Bland has never heard of before. Now, understand, that I forbid you to move or show your face again at the window."

"Oh, my!" pouted the girl, making believe to be very much afraid of him. That was the hardest part of the task confronting the Grange's latest tenant. He could awe and keep in check ten thousand turbulent and fanatical Pathans for many a year, but a clear-eyed English girl of twenty-two refused to be either awe-stricken or kept in restraint for as many minutes. Yet he must bend her to his will, for her own sake. He must force her away from Elmdale, from the hourly possibility of some ghastly revelation which would darken and embitter her life. The undertaking would go against the grain, but he dared not shirk it, and, once his mind was made up, he was not one whose resolution faltered.

CHAPTER V

GATHERING CLOUDS

The Nuttonby carrier took the new tenant of the Grange into his circle of acquaintances with the ready camaraderie of his class.

"Fine morning, sir," said he.

"An excellent morning," said Armathwaite. "Have you brought my boxes?"

"Yes, sir. They be rare an' heavy, an' all."

"You and I can manage them between us, I have no doubt," and Armathwaite led the way to the gate. As they passed the dining-room, Bland stared candidly through the window, but the girl was not visible.

"I didn't reckon on seein' Miss Meg to-day, sir," he said.

"Miss Meg? Who's Miss Meg?" smiled the other.

"Why, poor Mr. Garth's lass, to be sure."

"Ah! My cousin thought you were under the impression that you recognized her. But you are mistaken. The lady you saw is Miss Marguérite Ogilvey."

"Is she now? Well, that takes it! I could ha' sworn—Miss who, sir?"

Armathwaite repeated the name, and Tom Bland scratched his head. He was elderly, and weather-tanned as the Nuttonby porter, but his occupation had quickened his wits; there are times when one should not reiterate an opinion.

"You'll not have tried the beck yet, sir?" he said, twisting the conversation rather obviously. "I had a turn in the Swale meself last evenin'—this water runs into it, ye ken, an' the troot were risin' fine."

"What flies did you use?"

"Two March browns an' a black gnat. There's nowt like a March brown, to my thinkin'."

"Can you tell me who owns the land in that direction?" and Armathwaite pointed to the wooded gill which cut into the moorland to the eastward.

Bland gave some names, which Armathwaite entered in a notebook. He was wondering whether or not he should ask the man not to mention that he had seen a second occupant of the house, but decided that gossip would be stilled more quickly if the topic were left severely alone. He knew that Walker had told the carrier certain facts about himself. Possibly there would be some talk when next the two met, but, by that time, the Grange would have lost its highly interesting visitor, and Armathwaite smiled at the notion of the dapper young auctioneer trying to extract information from him.

The boxes, too, permitted of no waste of breath. When the third was dumped in the hall Bland was gasping, and Armathwaite's rather sallow face wore a heightened color.

"That was a stiff haul for your horse. How much?" said the owner of these solid trunks.

"It's eight miles——" began Bland. Despite a fixed tariff he could not forego an opportunity for bargaining, and Yorkshire will never give a direct answer if it can be avoided.

"Sixteen, really," broke in Armathwaite. "Will sixteen shillings meet the case?"

But Bland drew the line at downright extortion.

"Nay, nay!" he said. "I had a few calls on the way, an' there's some empties to go back from the Fox and Hounds. Take off the six, sir, an' I'll be very content."

Armathwaite paid him and added a florin "for a drink." As it happened, Betty Jackson crossed the hall, and nodded a greeting. This was fortunate. The girl's presence lent a needed touch of domesticity.

"Ye'll hae gotten Betty an' her mother to do for you?" commented the carrier.

"Yes. I was lucky to find them available."

"Ay, they're all right. They'll mak' ye comfortable. They will, an' all. I've known Mrs. Jackson these fot-ty year. Good mornin', sir. If you want owt frae Nuttonby just tell the postman. I come this way Tuesdays, Thursdays an' Saturdays."

With the departure of the carrier Armathwaite fancied that the irksomeness of life would lessen. The "cousin" of recent adoption had evidently withdrawn to the farther part of the dining-room, because Bland, despite many attempts, had not set eyes on her again. She, of course, was aware when he mounted into the cart and rumbled out of sight around the corner of the cottage. She came out. Armathwaite was unstrapping the boxes. One was already open, revealing books in layers.

"Sorry I'm such a nuisance," she said quietly. "Of course, it was thoughtless of me to nod to Tom Bland, but he took me by surprise. Naturally, you don't wish people to know I am in Elmdale. Will you confer one last favor? Take your rods and pannier, and go for a couple of hours' fishing. I shall scoot before you return. I'll select the few things I require, and Betty will pack them, and hand them over to Bland on Saturday."

He was on his knees and looked up at her.

"By 'scooting' do you mean that you are going to walk across that moor again?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"If that is the only possible way of escape, I'll go with you."

"Walk twenty-eight miles? Ridiculous!"

"You're not going alone."

"I am." This with a little stamp of one of the brown brogues, mighty fetching.

"I shall not force my company on you, if that is what you fear."

"But how absurd! Do you intend following me?"

"Yes—until you are within easy range of the railway."

"Mr. Armathwaite, I'm perfectly well able to take care of myself."

"I'm sure of it, Meg. But a cousin should be cousinly. Our relationship will not be close. Say, a distance of two hundred yards."

He smiled into her eyes; his stern face softened wonderfully when he smiled.

"I couldn't think of permitting it," she pouted, eyeing him with a new interest.

He sat back on his heels, and affected a resigned attitude.

"Let's argue the point for two hours," he said. "I can't go fishing, because I shall be trespassing until I have acquired some rights. Moreover, nothing short of violence will stop me from escorting you over the moor. In this weather, moors contain tramps."

"I know. I met two yesterday."

"Did they speak to you?"

"One did. I didn't mind him. The second one turned and looked. I was ready to run, but he only stared."

"May I ask what costume you intend wearing for to-day's outing?"

"I haven't quite decided. It may be a blue Shantung or a white piqué, but it won't be gray flannel, if that's what you're hinting at."

He rose, and felt in his pockets.

"I think we can get through those two hours comfortably. May I smoke?" he said.

"Yes, please do. Then you won't be so grumpy. Walk twenty-eight miles on my account! The idea!"

"I've walked forty before to-day, and stood a very reasonable chance of being potted every inch of the way. You won't fire at me, at any rate, so twenty-eight is a mere stroll. In fact, if you are gracious, it can be a pleasant one, too."

"Potted! Were you in the army?"

"No. Soldiers like that sort of thing! I didn't so I gave it up. Sure you don't mind a pipe?"

"I love it. I often fill and light dad's for him when he's busy. You ought to see him when he's tracking some Norse legend to its lair, or clearing up a point left doubtful by Frazer in the Golden Bough. Have you ever read Frazer? I know him and Mannhardt almost by heart. I help dad a lot in my own little way. Have you ever played cat's cradle?"

"With a piece of string?"

"Yes. Well, games and folk-lore go together, and cat's cradle has been played since the ancient Britons wore—whatever ancient Britons did wear. Now, you're laughing at me."

"Indeed, I'm not. I was marveling at our kindred tastes. Have you heard of the Jatakas and Panchatantras of India?"

"I know that there are such things."

"I'll jot down two or three, with a translation."

"Oh, wouldn't dad love to meet you! He often growls because he can't read Sanskrit."

"Tell me where you live, and I'll look you up some day."

"Our permanent address is——Oh, my! Somebody's coming, and I don't want you to be cross with me again."

She fled into the kitchen. The door had hardly closed when a shadow darkened the porch. Armathwaite, lighting his pipe, gazed through a cloud of smoke at a red-faced policeman.

"Hello!" he said. "Who have you come for?"

The policeman grinned, and saluted.

"There's not much doing in Elmdale in my line, sir," he said. "I was told the Grange had a new tenant, so I just looked in. I come this way Thursday mornings and Monday nights, as a rule. I'm stationed at Bellerby, nearly three miles from here. Last time I was in this hall——"

Armathwaite was too quick for him. Residence in Mr. Walker's "house 'round the corner" had proved so rife in surprises that the long arm of coincidence might be expected to play its part at any moment. So he countered deftly.

"Sorry I can't be more hospitable," he broke in, advancing, and deliberately causing the constable to step back into the porch. "Everything is at sixes and sevens. I only arrived yesterday, and my boxes, as you see, are not yet unpacked."

He closed the door, feeling certain that his judgment had not erred. It was soon justified.

"Next time you're passing, give me a call," he went on. "I'll be able to offer you a whisky and soda or a bottle of beer. Are you the man who was brought here by a Mr. Benson on a certain occasion?"

"I am, sir, and it was a nasty job, too. I'm glad someone has taken the place. It's a nice property, but the garden has gone to wrack and ruin since poor Mr. Garth went. Just look at them dandelions, growin' where there used to be a bed of the finest begonias I've ever seen! 'Begonia Smith' was the gardener's nickname for miles around. And convolvulus instead of sweet peas! It's a sin, that's what it is!"

The policeman, clearly an enthusiast, took off his helmet, and wiped his forehead with a purple pocket-handkerchief.

"You knew Mr. Garth, I suppose?" said Armathwaite, strolling towards the dandelions, whose vigorous growth was so offensive to the horticultural eye. The other went with him, little thinking he was being headed off a scent which might lead to a greater tragedy than the devastation of a once well-kept garden.

"Knew him well, sir. A very pleasant-spoken gentleman he was, an' all. I brought him a party of plow stots one day—men who dance in the villages at Martinmas, sir—and he was as pleased as Punch because they sang some old verses he'd never heard before. The last man in the world I'd ever have thought of to kill himself."

"There was no doubt that he committed suicide?"

"No, sir, that there wasn't. He'd been dead two days when I cut him down. Well, no need to talk of it now, but even the doctor was rattled, though the weather was very hot that June."

Armathwaite felt as if he had been conjured by some spiteful necromancer out of a smiling and sunlit English countryside into a realm of ghouls and poison-growths. A minute ago a charming and sweet-spoken girl had been chatting glibly about her father's wanderings in the by-ways of folk-lore, and now this stolid policeman was hinting at the gruesomeness of his task when called on to release the lifeless body of that same man from its dolorous perch beside the clock.

For an instant he lost himself, and fixed such a penetrating glance on the constable that the latter grew uneasy, lest he had said something he ought not to have said. Armathwaite realized the mistake at once, and dropped those searching eyes from the other's anxious face to some scraps of ribbon sewn on the left breast of the dark blue tunic.

"You have the Tirah medal, I see," he said. "Were you at Dargai?"

The question achieved the immediate effect counted on.

"I was, an' all, sir," and the ex-soldier squared his shoulders. "Though no Scottie, I was in the Gordon Highlanders. Were you there, sir?"

"I—er—yes, but as a non-combatant. I was in the Politicals—quite a youngster in those days, and I was fool enough to envy you that rush across the plateau."

"It was warm work while it lasted, sir."

"There have been few things to equal it in warfare. What time do you pass through the village on Monday?"

"Shortly after eleven, sir."

"If you see a light, come in. If not, look me up next Thursday. If I'm fishing, I'll leave word with Mrs. Jackson that you're to have a refresher should you be that way inclined."

"Thank you, sir. My name's Leadbitter, if ever you should want me."

"And a jolly good name, too, for a man who fought against the Afridis. By the way, can you tell me what time the post leaves here?"

"A rural postman calls at Thompson's shop for letters about half-past four, sir."

A cigar changed hands, and P. C. Leadbitter strode off, holding his head high. It was a red-letter day. He had met one who knew what the storming of the Dargai Pass meant. Even the memories of Stephen Garth pendant from a hook beneath the china shelf faded into the mists of a country policeman's humdrum routine. He was halfway to Bellerby when he remembered that he had not done the one thing he meant doing—he had not asked Mr. Armathwaite's intentions with regard to the garden. Begonia Smith had retired to a village lying between Bellerby and Nuttonby. Though too old to take a new situation, he would jump at the chance of setting his beloved Grange garden in order again, and, of course, he was just the man for the job. Leadbitter believed in doing a good turn when opportunity offered. After tea, he went in search of Smith of the order Begoniaceae. To save half a mile of a three miles' tramp by road, he passed through the estate of Sir Berkeley Hutton, and met that redoubtable baronet himself strolling forth to see how the partridges were coming on.

"Ha!" cried Hutton, knowing that his land was not in the policeman's district, "has that rascally herd of mine been gettin' full again?"

"No, Sir Berkeley, Jim's keepin' steady these days," was the answer. "There's a new tenant at the Grange, Elmdale; he'll be wantin' a gardener, I'm thinkin', so I'm going to put Begonia Smith on his track."

"A new tenant! You don't tell me. What's his name?"

"A Mr. Robert Armathwaite, Sir Berkeley. A very nice gentleman, too. Been in India, in the Politicals, he said. I didn't quite know what he meant——"

"But I do, by Jove, and a decent lot of chaps they are. Picked men, all of 'em. I must look him up. I haven't met anyone of that name, but we're sure to own scores of friends in common. Glad I met you, Leadbitter. I'll drive over there some day soon. Armathwaite, you say? Sounds like an old Yorkshire name, but it's new to me. The coveys are strong on the wing this year, eh?"

So, all unwittingly so far as Armathwaite was concerned, his recognition of an Indian Frontier ribbon had set in motion strange forces, as a pebble falling from an Alpine summit can start an avalanche. In truth, he had not yet grasped the essential fact that residents in a secluded district of Yorkshire, or in any similar section of the United Kingdom, were close knit throughout astonishingly large areas. He had belonged to a ruling caste among an inferior race during so many active years that he still retained the habits of thought generated by knowledge of local conditions in India, where a town like Nuttonby would have little in common with a hamlet like Elmdale, whereas, in Yorkshire, Nuttonby knew the affairs of Elmdale almost as intimately as its own.

But enlightenment on this point, and on many others, was coming speedily. He received the first sharp lesson within a few hours.

Marguérite Ogilvey might be a most industrious young lady when circumstances were favorable, but she had so many questions to put, and so much local news to absorb from Mrs. Jackson and Betty, that the morning slipped by without any material progress being made in the avowed object of her visit.

Armathwaite, piling rows of books on the library floor, noticed that the collection of seven, ranging from a Sheffield cake-basket to a Baxter print, had not been added to. The girl wanted to know, of course, why Leadbitter came, and was told, though his references to the disheveled state of the garden were suppressed. Then she volunteered to help in disposing of the new lot of books, but her services were peremptorily declined.

"You're a grumpy sort of cousin at times, Bob," she cried, and betook herself to the scullery and more entertaining company. She had been chatting there an hour, or longer, when she wheeled round on Mrs. Jackson with an astonished cry.

"I've been here all the morning, and you've never said a word about my father and mother," she declared. "They're quite well, thank you; but you might have inquired."

"Well, there!" stammered Mrs. Jackson, "It was on the tip of me tongue half a dozen times, an' something drove it away again. An' how are they, Miss Meg?"

"I've just told you. I do wish they'd come back to the Grange, but they seem to hate the very mention of it. I wonder why?"

"Elmdale's a long way frae Lunnon," said Betty, catching at a straw in this sudden whirlpool.

"We're just as far from London in Cornwall," laughed the girl.

"Oh, is that where you've gone?" put in Mrs. Jackson incautiously.

"Yes. Didn't you know? Hadn't you the address for letters?"

"No, miss. Miggles said"—Miggles was the peripatetic postman—"that all letters had to be sent to Holloway & Dobb, in Nuttonby."

Marguérite looked rather puzzled, because her recollection ran differently; she dropped the subject, thinking, doubtless, that her parents' behests had some good reason behind them, and ought to be respected.

"Anyhow," she went on, "now that I've broken the ice by coming here, my people may be willing to return. I don't suppose Mr. Armathwaite will stay beyond the summer."

"Mr. Walker tole me he thought of takin' the place for a year," said Mrs. Jackson.

"Indeed. I'll ask him at lunch. I've wasted the morning, so I'll stay another night, and start early to-morrow. You'll find me a bed in the cottage, won't you, Mrs. Jackson?"

"Mebbe, Mr. Armathwaite will be vexed," said Betty, making a half-hearted effort to carry out the compact between herself and her employer.

"Leave Mr. Armathwaite to me," laughed Marguérite. "He's a bear, and he growls, but he has no claws, not for women, at any rate. No one could be nicer than he last night. I felt an awful fool, and looked it, too; but he didn't say a single word to cause me any embarrassment. Moreover, he intends crossing the moor with me, and I can't let him get lost in the dark. Men have died who were lost on that moor."

"Oh, but that's in the winter, miss, when the snow's deep," said Betty.

"Why, I do believe you want to get rid of me!" cried the other.

Betty flushed guiltily. She was floundering in deep waters, and struck out blindly.

"Oh, no, miss," she vowed. "You know me better than that. P'raps you'll be gettin' married one of these days, an' then you can please yourself, an' live here."

"Married! Me get married, and leave dad and mums! Oh, dear no! One young man has asked me already, and I—"

"Betty," said a voice from the doorway leading to the hall, "can you give me a duster?"

The conclave started apart, like so many disturbed sparrows; but Armathwaite could make a shrewd guess as to the name of the "one young man," since he had Marguérite Ogilvey's own testimony for it that Percy Whittaker would "do anything" to oblige her, and what more likely than that such devotion should lead to matrimony?

At luncheon he received with frigidity the girl's statement that she planned remaining in Elmdale till the morrow.

"There's really no reason to hurry," she said airily. "The Whittakers know where I am, and I'll send a postcard saying I'll be with them Friday evening."

"I must remind you that every hour you prolong your visit you add to the risk of discovery," he said.

"Discovery of what, or by whom?" she demanded.

"I am only endeavoring to fall in with your own wishes. You came here secretly. You took pains to prevent anyone from recognizing you. Have you changed your mind?"

"I—I think I have. You see, your being here makes a heap of difference."

"Precisely. You ought to get away all the sooner."

"First Betty—now you! I must indeed be an unwelcome guest in my father's house. Of course, I can't possibly stay now. There's a train from Leyburn at seven o'clock. I can catch it by leaving here at three, but I shan't start unless I go alone."

She looked prettier than ever when her brown eyes sparkled with anger, but Armathwaite hardened his heart because of the grim shadow which she could not see but which was hourly becoming more visible to him.

"Is Leyburn the station on the other side of the moor?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Then you will remain here three weary months, Meg."

"I don't pretend to understand," she cried wrathfully.

"I've paid three months' rent, and here I shall stay if a regiment of girls and a whole army of Percy Whittakers try to eject me. As I am equally resolved not to allow you to cross the moor unaccompanied, you will readily perceive the only logical outcome of your own decision."

The brown eyes lost their fire, but acquired another sort of sheen.

"What has happened that you should speak so unkindly?" she quavered. "Last night and this morning you—you—didn't order me out. And I don't see why you should drag in Percy Whittaker. I only borrowed his togs."

Many times in the history of this gray old world have woman's tears pierced armor and sapped fortresses. This hapless man yielded at once.

"Confound it, Miss Ogilvey, I'd keep you here during the remainder of my days if I could arrange matters to my own liking and yours," he blurted out.

She recovered her self-possession with amazing readiness.

"Now, Bob, you're talking nonsense," she tittered. "Aren't we making mountains out of molehills? I have lots to do, and hate being rushed. I can stay with Mrs. Jackson to-night, and you and I will set out for Leyburn early to-morrow. Then, if you don't care to face the return journey, you shall take train to Nuttonby and drive here. Isn't that a good plan?"

"We must adopt it, at any rate," he said grudgingly. "But you promise to remain hidden all day?"

"Yes, even that. Now, let's stop squabbling, and eat. Tell me something about India. It must be an awfully jolly place. If I went there, should I be a mem-sahib?"

"It is highly probable."

"What a funny way to put it! Aren't all English ladies in India mem-sahibs?"

"The married ones are. The spinsters are miss-sahibs."

She laughed delightedly, and without any sense of awkwardness because of her own blunder.

"Naturally they would be. That's rather neat when you come to think of it," she cried.

Old jokes are ever new in someone's ears, or no comic paper could live beyond a year. When Betty came in with a gooseberry tart and cream, she heard the two calling each other "Bob" and "Meg," and reported thereon in the kitchen.

"It seems to me she's larnt summat (something) i' Cornwall," commented Mrs. Jackson.

"And him old enough to be her father!" marveled Betty.

"Fiddlesticks! It's the life he's led that's aged him. He's not a day more'n thirty-five."

Mrs. Jackson was no bad judge. Her employer was in his thirty-sixth year.

After luncheon, Marguérite Ogilvey collected her treasures, and, with Betty's help, packed them in boxes obtained at the village shop. Before tea, she wrote a letter, which Armathwaite took to the post. While there, he inquired about the fishing, and the grocer pointed out a very tall and stoutly-built man stacking hay at the bottom of a long field.

"That's Mr. Burt," he said. "He owns a mile or more of the best water. If you were to go an' see him now, sir, you could settle things straight off."

"But I want to have a word with Miggles."

"He'll be here in ten minutes, sir, an' I'll tell him to give you a hail. The Nuttonby road passes the end of that field."

Matters seemed to be arranged conveniently; as, indeed, they were, if sprites were laying snares for Robert Armathwaite's feet.

He met Farmer Burt, and was given all fishing facilities at once. Nay, more, if this weather lasted, as was likely, and all the hay was saved by sunset, Burt himself would call next day, and reveal the lie of the land.

"Make it Saturday," said Armathwaite, mindful of another fixture.

"Right you are, sir!"

Someone shouted. It was Miggles, breast-high beyond a hedge. At that instant Armathwaite caught sight of a dog-cart swinging into Elmdale. A gallant figure at the reins seemed somehow familiar. Therefore, instead of describing the kind of bath he wished Tom Bland to bring from an ironmonger's, he said sharply to the postman:

"Who is that in the dog-cart?"

"Young Mr. Walker, o' Nuttonby, sir," was the answer.

James Walker! The man whom Marguérite Ogilvey said she hated, and such a phrase on a girl's lips with reference to a man like Walker almost invariably means that she has been pestered by his attentions. The Grange was nearly a mile distant, and Walker was now dashing through the village street.

"Damn!" said Armathwaite, making off at top speed.

Miggles gazed after him.

"Rum houses draws rum coves," he said, trudging away on his daily round. "Not that he's the first who's damned young Jimmy Walker, not by a jolly long way!"

Evidently, an Aristotelian postman.

CHAPTER VI

THE STORM BREAKS

Armathwaite's face, as he strode through Elmdale, was hardly that of a man who had found there the quiet and solitude he had stipulated for when in treaty with Walker & Son. Its stern and harassed aspect was seen and commented on by a score of people. Though most of the inhabitants were busy in the fields, there were watchers in plenty peering from each farm and cottage. Already the village held in common the scanty stock of information possessed by the Jacksons concerning the Grange's new tenant, because mother and daughter were far too shrewd to provoke discussion by withholding the facts stated by the house agent. They knew that every urchin who could toddle had peeped through gate and hedges that morning; they were more alive than Armathwaite himself to the risk Miss Meg ran of being seen if she went outside the house, front or back, for ten seconds. The best way to disarm gossip was to answer as best they might the four questions put by every inquirer: Who is he? Where does he come from? Is he married? How long will he stop?

Singularly enough, in a land of variable weather, Elmdale at this time was bathed in brilliant sunshine from morn till eve. The ripening crops, the green uplands, the moor, with its gorse just fading and its heather showing the first faint flush of purple, were steeped in the "great peacefulness of light" so dear to Ruskin. If one searched the earth it would be hard to find a nook where sorrow and evil were less likely to dree their weird; yet, Armathwaite expected to meet those grim sisters stalking through the ancient house when he saw an empty dog-cart and an open door; he seldom erred in such forecasts, and his divination was not at fault now.

As he entered the hall, he heard the girl's voice, clear and crisp and scornful.

"How dare you say such things to me! How dare you! My father is alive and well. If he were here now——"

James Walker chuckled.

"Tell that to the Marines," he began. The remainder of the sentence died on his lips when Armathwaite's tall form appeared in the doorway.

"You here, Mr. Walker?" said the Anglo-Indian calmly. Then, noting Marguérite Ogilvey's white face and distraught eyes, he assumed a mystified air, and cried:

"Hullo, Meg, what's gone wrong?"

She flew to him instantly, clasping his arm, and the confident touch of her fingers thrilled him to the core.

"Oh, Bob, I'm so glad you've come back," she almost sobbed. "That—that nasty little man has been telling such horrid fibs. He says—he says—Oh, Bob, won't you send him away?"

At that moment the mental equilibrium of James Walker, junior (his father was also James) was badly shaken. It oscillated violently in one direction when he noted the manner of address these two adopted the one to the other. It swung to another extreme on hearing himself described as "a nasty little man" by a girl for whom a long-dormant calf love had quickened in his veins when Tom Bland announced that "Meg Garth, or her ghost," was at the Grange that day. It positively wobbled when Armathwaite threw a protecting arm round the desired one's shoulders. So he listened, open-mouthed, when Armathwaite spoke.

"Sorry I wasn't at home, Meg, dear, when Mr. Walker arrived—or he wouldn't have troubled you," the mysterious stranger was saying. There was an unpleasant glint in the steely glance that accompanied the next words:

"Now, Mr. Walker, come outside, and explain your business."

But Walker was no country bumpkin, to be overawed and silenced by a man of superior social status. He was puzzled, and stung, stung beyond hope of cure. Yet he was not afraid. Certain qualities of sharpness and cuteness warned him that if he controlled his temper, and did not bluster, he held the whip hand in a situation of which the true inwardness was still hidden.

"My business is not with you, Mr. Armathwaite," he said, with the utmost civility his tongue was capable of. "I heard of Miss Garth's arrival, and came to see her. It's not my fault if she's vexed at what I've said. I meant no offense. I only told the truth."

"I have reason to believe that you forced yourself into Miss Garth's presence;" and, in repeating the name, Armathwaite pressed the girl's shoulder gently as an intimation that no good purpose would be served by any correction in that respect. "Again, and for the last time, I request you to leave her."

"There's no last time about it," said Walker, who was watching Marguérite's wan and terror-stricken face. "I had a perfect right to call on Meg Garth. She daren't pretend she doesn't know me, and a false name can't humbug me, or Tom Bland, for that matter."

"I know you only too well," broke in the girl with a vehemence that brought a momentary rush of color to her cheeks. "You annoyed me for two years, and I'm sorry now I didn't complain to my father about your ridiculous oglings and shilling boxes of chocolates, which I gave to the village children."

She struck harder than she knew. Walker bridled like an annoyed turkey-cock. Armathwaite pressed Marguérite's shoulder a second time, and withdrew his hand.

"If your ungracious admirer won't leave you, Meg, you had better leave him," he said, smiling into her woebegone face. "Go into the drawing-room, or join Mrs. Jackson. I'll deal with Mr. Walker."

He held the door open, purposely blotting Walker out of sight, and the girl obeyed. She went out bravely enough, but he caught a smothered sob as she passed towards the kitchen. There also, he was bitterly aware, danger lurked in other guise, though the two well-disposed women might perchance have the wit to discredit Walker's revelations, whatever they were.

Closing the door, which swung half open again without his knowledge, he turned an inquiring and most unfriendly eye on the unwanted visitor.

"I hope you are ashamed of yourself," he said quietly.

If Walker had understood mankind better, he would not have misinterpreted that suave utterance by imagining, as he did, that it betokened fear of exposure. Unhappily, he strutted, and slapped a gaitered leg with a switch he carried in place of a whip.

"Ashamed of nothing," he answered truculently. "I admit being sweet on the girl. What is there to be ashamed of in that, I'd like to know?"

"It's distinctly to your credit, in some ways," said Armathwaite. "I should have expected your tastes to run rather to barmaids, with an ultimate vote in favor of the daughter of a well-to-do butcher. I dislike class distinctions, Walker. Too often they savor of snobbery; but, in this instance, I am obliged to remind you that my cousin is a lady."

"Oh, is that it? Cousins, are you? I wish you'd told me sooner."

"Why?"

"It might have saved this bit of bother, anyhow."

"I don't think that any well-meant explanations on my part could cure you of an impertinent nature, Walker."

"Dash it all, Mr. Armathwaite, why couldn't I visit Meg? I've seen and spoken to her scores of times."

"But, even in Nuttonby, one does not thrust one's presence on a lady uninvited."

Walker laughed. He could stand any amount of reproof as to his manners, because he rather prided himself on a swaggering disregard of other people's feelings.

"We don't stand on ceremony in Yorkshire," he said jauntily. "I opened the door, and actually heard her voice. There was no sense in Betty Jackson sayin' Miss Garth wasn't here, and I told her so pretty plainly. Then, out she came. What would you have done, in my shoes? Now, I ask you, sir, as man to man."

"I would have striven not to insult her so grossly that she should be moved to tears."

"But I didn't. Don't you believe it. I was pleasant as could be. She behaved like a regular little spit-fire. Turned on me as though she'd been waitin' for the chance. I can stand a lot, but I'm jiggered if I'd let her tell me she'd complain to her father, and have him take away the agency of the property from our firm, when her father is buried these two years in Bellerby churchyard. Why, she must think I'm dotty."

Armathwaite moistened his lips with his tongue.

"You enlightened her ignorance, I presume?" he inquired blandly.

"I didn't know what she was gettin' at, but I asked her plump and plain who the 'Stephen Garth' was who hanged himself in this very house, and has his name and the date of his death on the stone over his grave.... It strikes me that even you don't know the facts, Mr. Armathwaite. If her father is alive, who was the man who committed suicide?... And, by jing, did he commit suicide?"

James Walker's theorizing ended suddenly.

"You poisonous little rat!" murmured Armathwaite, and seized him. Walker was young and active, and by no means a weakling or cowardly, but he resembled a jackal in the grip of a tiger when the hands closed on him which had choked the life out of Nas'r-ulla Khan, chief cut-throat of the Usman Khel. There was no struggle. He was flung face downwards on the table until the door was thrown wide. Then he was bundled neck and crop out of the house, and kicked along the twenty yards of curving path to the gate.

There Armathwaite released him, a limp and profane object.

"Now, go to Nuttonby, and stop there!" was the parting injunction he received. His bitterest humiliation lay in the knowledge that Marguérite Garth and Betty Jackson, hearing the racket, had rushed to hall and door, and were gloating over his discomfiture. A drop of bitterest gall was added by his assailant's subsequent behavior, for Armathwaite turned his back on him, and sauntered slowly to the house, seemingly quite assured that there would be no counter-attack. And, indeed, James Walker retained sufficient sense in his frenzied brain to realize that he had no earthly chance in a physical struggle with this demon of a man. So he climbed into the dog-cart, though not with his wonted agility, and drove away to Nuttonby without ever a backward glance.

But he vowed vengeance, vowed it with all the intensity of a mean and stubborn nature. He had visions, at first, of a successful action for assault and battery; but, as his rage moderated, he saw certain difficulties in the way. His only witnesses would be hostile, and it was even questionable if a bench of magistrates would convict Armathwaite when it was shown that he, Walker, had virtually forced an entry into the house, and refused to leave when requested.

But he could strike more subtly and vindictively through the authorities. Marguérite Garth had said that Stephen Garth was living, and Robert Armathwaite—that compound of iron knuckles and whip-cord muscles—had tacitly endorsed the statement. If that was true, who was the man buried in Stephen Garth's name and identity in the churchyard at Bellerby? He had a vague recollection of some difference of opinion between the coroner and a doctor at the inquest. He must refresh his memory by consulting a file of the Nuttonby Gazette. In any event, he could stir a hornets' nest into furious activity and search the innermost recesses of the Grange with anguish-laden darts. Curse Meg Garth and her cousin! He'd teach both of 'em, that he would! If they thought that James Walker was done with because he had been flouted and ill-used, they were jolly well mistaken, see if they weren't!

Marguérite Ogilvey was as tender-hearted a girl as ever breathed, but it needed super-human qualities—qualities that no woman could possibly possess and have red blood in her veins—to restrain the fierce joy which thrilled her being when she saw her persecutor driven forth with contumely. Betty Jackson, the village maid, was delighted but shocked; Marguérite, the educated and well-bred young lady, rejoiced candidly.

"You've done just what I would have done if I were a strong man like you!" she cried tremulously, when Armathwaite faced her at the door. There was a light in her eyes which he gave no heed to at the moment—the light which comes into the eyes of woman when she is defended by her chosen mate—but he attributed it to excitement, and hastened to calm her.

"I may have acted rashly," he said; "but I couldn't help it. Sometimes, one has to take the law into one's own hands. Surely, this is one of the occasions."

"He'll keep clear of Elmdale for a bit," chortled Betty. "P'raps he thinks no one saw you kickin' him except ourselves. He's wrong! Half the village knows it! Old Mrs. Bolland nearly fell out of an upstairs window with cranin' her neck to see what was goin' on, an' there's little Johnnie Headlam runnin' down the ten-acre field now to tell Mr. Burt an' his men all about it."

The girl had thoughtlessly blurted out a fact of far-reaching import. Armathwaite swung on his heel, and found gaping faces at every cottage backwindow, and above every hedge. Sleepy Elmdale had waked. Its usually deserted street was pullulating with child life. The sharp Walkers were somewhat too sharp on the land agency side of their business, and were cordially hated in consequence. The bouncing of Walker, junior, had not made him popular; his trouncing would provide a joyous epic for many a day. As for Marguérite Ogilvey's presence in the house, it was known far and wide already. She had been recognized by dozens of people. Elmdale, which might have figured as Goldsmith's deserted village five minutes earlier, was now a thriving place, all eyes and cackling tongues.

Armathwaite had lost sight of that highly probable outcome of his action, nor did it trouble him greatly. The major happening, which he had striven so valiantly to avert, had come about through no fault of his; these minor issues were trivial and might be disregarded. In an earthquake the crumbling of a few bricks more or less is a matter of small account. He knew that when Marguérite Ogilvey had almost forgotten the downfall of Walker she would remember its immediate cause the more poignantly.

"Hadn't we better go indoors till the weather is cooler?" he said, and the sound of his calm voice, no less than the smile he managed to summon in aid, relaxed the tension.

"Please, miss, shall I make a fresh pot of tea?" inquired Betty when the door was closed. There spoke the true Yorkshire breed. Let the heavens fall, but don't miss a meal.

"No," said Marguérite, holding her open hands pressed close to eyes and cheeks.

"Yes," said Armathwaite—"that is, if Miss Meg has not had her tea."

Betty nodded, and hastened into the drawing-room, where, it appeared, tea was awaiting Armathwaite's return when Walker arrived on the scene. She emerged, carrying a tea-pot, and went to the kitchen. Marguérite was now crying silently. When the man caught her arm, meaning to lead her gently into the drawing-room, she broke into a very tempest of weeping, just as a child yields to an abandonment of grief when most assured of sympathy and protection.

He took her to a chair, but did not attempt to pacify her. For one thing, he had a man's belief that a woman's hyper-sensitive nervous system may find benefit in what is known as "a good cry;" for another, he was not sorry to have a brief respite during which to collect and criticize his own ideas. He did not even try to conceal from himself the ugly fact that James Walker had put into one or two sentences of concentrated venom all that was known to him (Armathwaite) concerning the death in the house, and even a little more, because he had not learnt previously that Stephen Garth was buried at Bellerby. Nor did he permit himself to under-rate Marguérite's intelligence. Her heedless vivacity, and the occasional use of school-girl slang in her speech, were the mere externals of a thoughtful and well-stored mind. There was not the least chance that she would miss any phase of the tragedy which had puzzled and almost bewildered him by its vagueness and mystery. She would recall his own perplexed questions of the previous night. In all likelihood the Jacksons, mother and daughter, had said things which fuller knowledge would clothe with sinister significance. Walker's open-mouthed brutality had left nothing to the imagination. When Marguérite Ogilvey spoke, Armathwaite felt that he would be called on to deal with the most difficult problem he had ever tackled.

When Betty came with a replenished tea-pot she would have attempted to soothe the girl's convulsive sobbing had not Armathwaite intervened.

"Leave Miss Meg to me," he said. "She's going to stop crying in a minute, and vow that she looks a perfect fright, and must really go to her room and bathe her eyes. And I'm going to tell her that a handkerchief dipped in a teaspoonful of milk and dabbed on red eyes is more refreshing and healing than a bucketful of cold water. Then we'll have tea, and eke a stroll on the moor, and perchance Providence will send us a quiet hour in which to look at facts squarely in the face, whereupon some of us will know just where we are, and the world will not be quite so topsy-turvy as it appears at this moment."

Betty gathered that the "master's" harangue was not meant for her, and withdrew, whereupon Marguérite dropped her hands and lifted her swimming eyes to Armathwaite's grave and kindly face.

"Is that milk recipe of yours really intended for use?" she inquired, with a piteous attempt at a smile.

"The whole program has been carefully planned on the most up-to-date and utilitarian lines," he answered.

"Did you hurt Walker?" was her next rather unexpected question, while pouring some milk into a saucer.

"Yes."

"I'm glad."

"How many boxes of chocolates did he send you?"

"About half a dozen."

"Then I kicked him at least once for each box—gave good measure, too."

"It's horrid and un-Christian—still, I'm glad. Do you take sugar and cream?"

"Of course."

"Why of course? Some people don't."

"I'm an emphatic person in my likes and dislikes, so I talk that way."

"I don't know what I should have done if you were not here."

"You are too charitable. It is my being here that has caused all the worry."

"No, I cannot take that view. There are happenings in life which, at the hour, seem to be the outcome of mere chance, but one realizes later that they were inevitable as autumn after spring."

"What a libel on our English climate," he laughed. "Is there no summer, then? What about this present glorious revel of sunshine? Charles the Second, who never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one, remarked one day that, in his opinion, England possessed the best climate in the world, because no day was too hot or too cold to prevent a man from going out of doors. I've seen more of the world, geographically speaking, than his kingship, yet I agree with him."

"My father——" she began, but choked suddenly.

"Tell me this, Meg: how long is it since you last saw your father?" he demanded, well knowing the futility of any attempt to divert her mind from a topic which must surely occupy it to the exclusion of all else.

"Just a week ago," she faltered.

"Good! I need not insist, then, that our young friend in the red waistcoat is mistaken when he says that your father occupies a grave in Bellerby churchyard! Of course, I'm not pretending that you and I are not faced with a strange problem. With your permission, I propose that we solve it together. I'll keep nothing back. You, on your part, must answer such questions as I think necessary—unless, that is, you feel I am trespassing unduly into the private affairs of your family. I'm not well posted in the turns and twists of English country life, but I am quite certain of two things—first, the mystery attached to this house must be dissipated now, because the police authorities will insist on it; second, if they beat me, and you suffer, they'll have achieved something that no set of officials has succeeded in doing hitherto. Now, I want you to believe that, and to act in the assumption that God is in heaven, and all is well with the world."

The girl smiled through her tears, and strove gallantly to eat one of the cheese-cakes for which Mrs. Jackson was renowned.

"Bob," she said, after a little while, "will you tell me why you came to Elmdale?"

"I wanted peace and solitude, plus some trout-fishing."

"Yet you speak of engaging in some terrible combat against the law on my account."

"Aren't you rather jumping at conclusions? Circumstances have conspired to build a bogey. A ghost which all Elmdale has seen in the hall resolves itself, on inquiry, into a shadow cast by a stained-glass window. Certain murderous-sounding thumps which I heard last night materialize into a charming young lady. Why shouldn't a death which took place in this house two years since prove equally susceptible of a simple explanation? No, we're not going to convert ourselves into a committee of two until you have taken one more cup of tea, one more cake, or two slices of bread and butter. Then you'll put on a hat, and I'll light a pipe, and we'll climb up to the moor. On the way I'll impart every scrap of information I've gathered thus far, and, when you have considered the situation in such light as I am able to cast on it, you will decide whether or not you are justified in telling me something of your recent history. Is it a bargain?"

Armathwaite was only talking for the sake of keeping the girl's mind from brooding on the extraordinary facts thrust on her by Walker. He was sure she would treat a phenomenal set of affairs more rationally if she heard the story from his own lips. He would have liked, if possible, to have glanced over the report of the inquest in the newspaper promised by Betty, but decided that Marguérite Ogilvey must not be left to her own thoughts one instant longer than was absolutely necessary.

Examination of the newspaper was deferred, therefore. When the girl ran downstairs to join him she had tied some scrap of blue veil over her hat in such wise that her face was screened in profile, so, as they breasted the hill together, he could hardly judge of the effect of the curious story he had to relate. He omitted nothing, minimized no detail. From the moment of his entry into the office of Walker & Son, at Nuttonby, he gave a full and lucid narrative. Rather losing sight of his own altruism in his eagerness to show how essential it was that they should meet attack with the confidence engendered by being prepared for all possible developments, he was not aware of the wondering glances which Marguérite shot at him with increasing frequency.

At last, he made an end. They had walked a mile or more, he talking steadily and the girl listening, only interposing a word now and again to show that she followed what he was saying, when he saw a man seated by the roadside at a little distance. The road dipped sharply at this point. They had crossed the first of a series of undulations which formed the great plateau of the moor, and Elmdale and its pastures were completely hidden.

"Shall we turn back?" he said. "This fellow in front looks like a weary tourist, but I fancy you don't want to meet anyone just now, and I haven't noticed a branch path through the heather."

Marguérite was gazing curiously at the bent figure. Her eyes held the expression of one who sees something familiar while the other senses refuse to be convinced. Armathwaite, by reason of the veil, could not see that half-startled, wholly skeptical look, but her attitude was enough.

"Do you think you know that chap?" he said.

Perhaps, in that quiet moorland, his voice carried farther than he imagined. Be that as it may, the tired one raised his drooping head, and looked their way.

"Why, it is—it must be!" cried Marguérite excitedly, though no man could guess whether she was pleased or annoyed.

"There can be no doubt about it," agreed Armathwaite.

"But, don't you see, he's waving to us? It's Percy Whittaker! Has he dropped from the skies?"

"With a bump, I should guess," said Armathwaite.

But inwardly he raged. Were these complications never to cease? That dejected figure was eloquent of fate. Somehow, its worn and nerveless aspect was menacing.

Yet, he laughed, being one who flaunted fortune in that way.

"If it really is Percy, let's go and cheer him up," he said. "He looks as though he needed comforting."

CHAPTER VII

A FAINT-HEARTED ALLY

That moment was a vital one in the lives of those two; it influenced the lives of others in lesser degree, but to Marguérite Ogilvey and Robert Armathwaite it meant so much that the man, in calm review of events subsequently, saw that it stood out from minor incidents in exactly the same dominant proportion as James Walker's hurried descent on Mrs. Jackson's cottage on the preceding day.

Had Walker remained in the dog-cart, and shouted for the keys of the Grange, Mrs. Jackson would have contrived, by hook or by crook, to delay the examination of the house until Betty had smuggled "Miss Meg" into safety, in which case Armathwaite would never have met her. And, now, if the girl had quickened her pace—in eager delight, perhaps, breaking into a run—had she, either by voice or manner, shown that the unforeseen presence of Percy Whittaker on the moor was not only an extraordinary event in itself, but one which she hailed with unmitigated joy, Armathwaite would assuredly have stifled certain vague whisperings of imagination which, ere long, might exercise a disastrous influence on the theory he held in common with a well-known British general—namely, that empire-builders should not be married. But she stood stock still, and, without turning her head so that Armathwaite might see her face, said quietly:

"Well, it is the unexpected that happens, and the last person I dreamed of seeing to-day was Master Percy."

"Are you sure it is Whittaker?" inquired Armathwaite.

He put the question merely for the sake of saying something banal and commonplace. Not for an instant did he doubt the accuracy of Marguérite's clear brown eyes; but, oddly enough, the behavior of the dejected figure by the roadside lent reasonable cause for the implied doubt. Never did tired wayfarer look more weary or disconsolate. After that first glance, and a listless gesture, the stranger showed no other sign of recognition. To all seeming, he had reached the limit of his resources, physical and mental.

"Sure?" echoed the girl. "Of course, I'm sure. There's only one Percy, and it's there now, beastly fagged after a long walk on a hot day in thin patent-leather shoes. Doesn't it remind you of a plucked weed drooping in the sunshine?"

She moved on, walking rapidly now, but a slight undertone of annoyance had crept into her voice, tinging her humor with sarcasm. Armathwaite said nothing. The sun-laved landscape glowed again after a few seconds of cold brilliance—a natural phenomenon all the more remarkable inasmuch as no cloud flecked the sky.

Thus, in silence, they neared the limp individuality huddled dejectedly on a strip of turf by the roadside. To Armathwaite's carefully suppressed amusement, he saw that the wanderer was indeed wearing thin, patent-leather shoes.

"Percy!" cried the girl.

Percy looked up again. He drew the fore-finger of his right hand around the back of his neck between collar and skin, as though his head required adjustment in this new position.

"Hallo, Meg!" he said, and the greeting was not only languid but bored.

"What in the world are you doing here?" she went on, halting in front of him.

"I dunno," he said. "I'm beastly fagged, I can tell you—"

Armathwaite smiled, but Marguérite laughed outright.

"There's nothing to grin at," came the querulous protest. "Once upon a time I labored under the impression that England was a civilized country, but now I find it's habitable only in parts, and this isn't one of the parts, not by a jolly long way. I say, Meg, you booked to Leyburn, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"But you never walked over this moor?"

"I did."

"Well, I wish I'd known as much about Yorkshire before I started as I do now—that's all."

Again he twisted his neck and freed it from the chafing contact of a tight collar. After a curious peep at Armathwaite, he bent a pair of gray-green eyes on the turf at his feet once more.

"Percy, don't be stupid, but tell me why you've come," cried Marguérite. "There's no bad news from home, is there?"

"No—that's all right. Edie sent me."

"Why?"

"You said you'd wire or write. When no telegram came yesterday, and no letter this morning, she bundled me off by the next train. 'Go and see what has become of her?' was the order, and here I am. Where am I, please?"

"Near Elmdale. I'm awfully sorry, Percy. I—I couldn't either telegraph or write yesterday. I've written to-day—"

"Near Elmdale!" he broke in. "Is it what the natives hereabouts call 'a canny bit' away?"

"No—only a little over a mile. Poor Percy!"

"Idiotic Percy! Percy, the silly ass! Percy, the blithering idiot! D'you see that suitcase?" and he swayed slightly, and directed a mournful glance at a small, leather portmanteau lying by his side. "I've sent that dashed thing, packed as it is now, by rail and parcels post scores of times, and they generally make it out as weighing about eleven pounds. That's a bally mistake. I must have swindled the railway companies and the Post Office out of a pot of money. It weighs a ton—one solid ton. And I've carried it dozens of miles. Me, mind you, who hates carrying things, clung to it as if my life depended on it. I started out from Leyburn station hours and hours ago. I asked a chap how far it was to Elmdale across the moor. He showed me the road, and said: 'It's a gay bit, maister.' I climbed a hill at least five miles high—higher than any mountain in Europe I can remember reading about—and met a man. 'Is this the way to Elmdale?' I inquired. 'Ay,' he said. 'How far?' said I. 'It's a nice bit, maister,' said he. Being, as I thought, on top of the hill, I imagined that all I had to do was to walk down the other side; so I left him and rambled on. After walking miles and miles I met another man. 'How far to Elmdale?' I said. 'It's a canny bit, maister,' was his contribution. That knocked me out. I left him without another word. I staggered more miles, till I got this far; but when I saw the next hill I gave in. Tell me the worst, Meg, before I lie down and die. How far is it to Elmdale, really?"

"Mr. Armathwaite will carry your suitcase, and I'll take your arm, and you'll be at the Grange in twenty minutes. It's all down hill after we leave this slight dip."

"Mr. Armathwaite?" inquired Percy dully, quite ignoring the other man's courteous smile at the implied introduction.

"Yes, the new tenant of our house."

"First I've heard of any new tenant."

"Nothing surprising in that," and Marguérite's voice grew almost snappy. "Get up, anyhow, unless you wish to have a mattress and a quilt brought here."

The young man rose. He was not affecting a weariness he did not feel. Being a weedy youth, not built for feats of athleticism, the long walk in a hot sun over difficult country had taxed his physique unduly.

"How d'ye do?" he said, raising lack-luster eyes to Armathwaite's.

"I'm fit as a fiddle," said Armathwaite cheerfully, grabbing the portmanteau. "So will you be to-morrow. In fact, you'll be surprised how quickly your muscles will lose their stiffness when you sight the journey's end."

"I've been doing that every five minutes during the past two hours," was the doleful answer.

Armathwaite nodded sympathetically. Percy Whittaker struck him as a flabby creature, whose conversational style was unintentionally funny. Like Falstaff, if not humorous in himself, he was "the cause of humor in others."

Truth to tell, Armathwaite gave him slight heed. He was mainly interested in Marguérite Ogilvey's attitude, and she was markedly irritated either by her friend's lackadaisical pose or because he had appeared at all. The girl softened, however, when she saw how Percy limped. She linked an arm in his, and the trio moved off.

"How often have I told you to wear strong boots with good, stout soles?" she said. "I'm a good walker myself, but I don't tackle these moor roads in house slippers. Isn't that so, Mr. Armathwaite? One ought to be properly shod for trudging about the country."

"You don't seem to understand that I hate trudging anywhere; the last thing I dreamed of when I left Chester this morning was that I should tramp half across Yorkshire," protested Whittaker.

"Even now, I don't see why you came."

"Couldn't help myself—Edie's orders."

"But why?"

"Well—er—"

"If you mean that she knew I had gone away intending to wear a boy's clothes you needn't spare my feelings. Mr. Armathwaite knows all about that."

"Does he? In that case, I'm spared any explanation. You see, Edie was naturally anxious. As for me, I hardly slept a wink last night through worrying about you. And then, a letter came for you this morning from your father. I recognized his handwriting, and it's marked 'Immediate.' Since there was no news from you, we were at a loss to decide on the best course to adopt. Now, I appeal to you, Mr. Armathwaite. Suppose—"

"I agree with you entirely," broke in Armathwaite. "I think Miss Ogilvey ought to be profoundly grateful for your self-sacrifice."

"There, Meg, do you hear that? Self-sacrifice! I'm literally skinned in your service, and you only pitch into me. Now, I've done most of the talking. It's your turn. When are you coming home?"

"To-morrow, perhaps."

"But, I say, Meg! There'll be a howling row with your people when they find out."

"Where is dad's letter? You've brought it, of course?"

"Yes. Edie thought that was the best plan. Here you are!"

He produced a letter from a breast pocket, and sat down instantly when the girl murmured an apology and opened the envelope. Armathwaite refilled his pipe, and lit it. While doing so he became aware that Percy Whittaker was scrutinizing him with a curiously subtle underlook, and the notion was borne in on him that the newcomer, though effete in some respects, might be alert enough in others. For one thing, the tired gray-green eyes had suddenly become critical; for another, a weak mouth was balanced by a somewhat stubborn chin. For all his amusingly plaintive air, this young man could be vindictive if he chose. At any rate, Armathwaite realized that another barrier had been thrust in the way of Marguérite Ogilvey's untroubled departure from Elmdale. Percy Whittaker was obviously an intimate friend, and the extraordinary crisis which had arisen in the Ogilvey household could hardly remain hidden from him. What use would he make of the knowledge? How would such a flabby youth act in circumstances which were utterly perplexing to a man ten years his senior in age and immeasurably more experienced? Armathwaite could not make up his mind. He must simply bide his time and act as he deemed expedient in conditions that varied so remarkably from hour to hour. At the moment, he was in the position of the master of a ship becalmed in the tropics, surrounded by an unvexed sea and a cloudless sky, yet warned by a sharp fall in the barometer that a typhoon was imminent.

His thoughts were interrupted by an exclamation from the girl.

"Just like dad!" she cried. "He writes asking me to search among the old bookshops of Chester for one of the very volumes I am bringing from his own library. He knows it is here, yet persists in disregarding the fact. Mr. Armathwaite, what am I to think? Isn't it enough to turn one's hair gray?"

"It is a puzzling situation, certainly," said Armathwaite, quickly alive to the fact that, in Whittaker's presence, at any rate, the cousinship had been dropped.

"What is?" demanded Whittaker. "Not much to make a fuss about in searching for a book, is there?"

"No. But suppose I tell you that people here declare my father is dead, that he committed suicide two years ago, that he is buried in a neighboring cemetery, that his ghost is seen o' nights in our own house—what would you say then, Percy?"

"I'd say that the inhabitants are well suited to their country, and the sooner you and I are away from both, the better for the pair of us."

Meg crumpled up the letter in one hand, and hauled Whittaker to his feet with the other.

"Come on," she said emphatically. "If you hear the whole story now you'll collapse. I'm glad you've arrived, though I thought at first you were adding to my worries. You can help in clearing up a mystery. Now, don't interrupt, but listen! I'm going to give you a plain, straightforward version of events which sound like the maddest sort of nonsense. You wouldn't believe a word I'm telling you if Mr. Armathwaite wasn't present. But he will vouch for every syllable, and, when I've finished, you'll agree that when I said we would leave here, 'to-morrow, perhaps,' I might just as well have substituted 'next week' or 'next month' for 'to-morrow.' Isn't that so, Mr. Armathwaite?"

Armathwaite removed his pipe from between teeth that were biting savagely into its stem. He wished the girl had been more discreet, yet, how could he forbid these confidences?

"Yes, and no," he answered. "Yes, if you mean to constitute yourself into a court of inquiry; no, if you take my advice, and return to Chester with Mr. Whittaker without loss of time."

"How is that possible?" she insisted, turning wondering eyes on him. "You yourself said that nothing we can do now will stop the authorities from re-opening the whole affair. There is no hope of closing people's mouths, Bob! Well, I've said it, and now Percy will be wild to learn the facts, because Meg Ogilvey doesn't run around calling by their Christian names men whom she has known a day without very good reason. But you don't know our local folk if you think our affairs are not being talked of in Elmdale and Nuttonby at this moment. Bland saw me, and James Walker will spread the tale far and wide. What good will I do by running away? Don't imagine I didn't hear what Walker said. He blurted out what you have hinted at. Some man was found dead in our house. It wasn't my father. Then, who was it?"

In her excitement she was hurrying Percy along at a rare pace, and Armathwaite saw, with a chill of foreboding, that the other was stepping out without protest, all an ear for impending revelations.

"From that point of view, Mr. Whittaker's presence is unquestionably advantageous," he said. "He is a friend in whom you can trust. He is acquainted with your relatives, I take it. His opinions will consequently be far weightier than mine."

"That's the way Bob talks when he's grumpy," said the girl, apparently for Whittaker's benefit alone. "He doesn't mean it really, but he thinks he ought to behave like a stage uncle and prevent an impulsive young thing from acting foolishly. Yet, all the time, he knows quite well that we could no more change the course of events now than hold back the tide."

"Will you kindly remember that if you were talking Greek, I'd have just about as much grasp of what you're saying as I have at this moment?" put in Whittaker.

Thus recalled to her task, Marguérite did not deviate from it any further. By the time Percy Whittaker had dropped into a chair in the dining-room, he had heard exactly what had happened since Armathwaite arrived in Elmdale. As he was hungry, a meal was improvised. He said little, only interpolating a fairly shrewd question now and again while Marguérite was amplifying some part of her recital. About this time he developed a new trait. He seemed rather to shirk comments which would draw Armathwaite into the conversation. When the girl appealed to the latter to verify some statement of fact, Whittaker remained silent. Even when it was necessary to refer directly to Armathwaite, he did so obliquely.

"You've spun a jolly queer yarn, Meg," he said, after she had retailed, for the second time, and with evident gusto, the discomfiture of James Walker. "I think it would be a good notion now if we found out what really did occur in this house after you and your mother went away. Didn't you say there was a newspaper report of the inquest handy?"

"Betty Jackson promised to give it to Mr. Armathwaite."

"Well, couldn't we see it?"

"I'll go and ask her for it," said Armathwaite, and he left the room.

"Tell you what, Meg," drawled Percy, pouring out a third cup of tea, "you're making a howling mistake in letting that chap share your confidence."

Marguérite's eyebrows curved in astonishment. The very suddenness of this attack was disconcerting.

"What do you mean?" she cried.

"It's not always easy to give reasons for one's ideas. I was just thinking that he's a complete stranger, and here he is acting as though he was the head of the family. Who is he? Where does he come from? Why is he poking his nose into your private affairs? By gad, I can see Edie sniffing at him if she was here in my place!"

Some gleam of intuition warned the girl that she must repress the sharp retort on her lips.

"Then I am glad your sister is not here," she said quietly. "You must have woefully misunderstood every word I have uttered if you imagine that Mr. Armathwaite has done anything but strive manfully to keep a sordid story from my ken. He tried to make me go away this morning, and again this afternoon. He would certainly send me off early to-morrow if he were not afraid of some terrible thing happening. Please don't begin by being prejudiced against Mr. Armathwaite. I have enough trouble staring me in the face to dispense with absurd suspicions of one who has been a very real friend."

Whittaker seemed to weigh the point. Marguérite's self-control probably angered him as greatly as any other of the amazing things which had come to his knowledge during the past hour. He had expected her to bridle in defense of the man in whom she reposed such trust; her very calmness was unexpected and annoying.

"What will your people say when the whole business comes out?" he grumbled. "Dash it, Meg, I must speak plainly! It's no joke, you know, your coming here and being alone in the house with some fellow whom you never heard of before in your life."

Her face paled, and her brown eyes had a glint of fire in them; but with a splendid effort, she managed again to frame words other than those eager to burst forth.

"You miss the real problem that calls for solution," she said tremulously. "The consequences of my actions, no matter how foolish they may have been, count for nothing in comparison with the tragedy with which my father's name is bound up. Oh, Percy, don't you see what people must think? A man committed suicide in this house, and every one believed it was my father. Yet you yourself, less than an hour ago, brought me a letter written by my father yesterday! Suppose I leave Elmdale this instant—suppose, which is impossible, that the present excitement dies down—how can I go through life with such a ghastly secret weighing me down? It would drive me crazy!"

Armathwaite's firm tread was audible as he crossed the hall.

"Anyhow, take my tip, and don't blurt out everything you know the minute you're asked," muttered her counselor, and the door opened.

Armathwaite drew a chair to the window and unfolded a frayed newspaper, laying another on his knees. To all appearance, he had noted neither the sullen discontent in one face nor the white anguish in the other.

"This is a copy of the Nuttonby Gazette, dated June 22nd, two years ago," he said. "It contains what appears to be a verbatim report of the opening day's inquest, which seems to have created a rare stir, judging by the scare heads and space allotted to it. Will it distress you, Miss Ogilvey, if I go through it from beginning to end?"

"Yes, it will distress me very greatly, but I don't see how I can avoid hearing it. If one visits the dentist there is no use in pretending that having a tooth drawn doesn't hurt. Please read every word."

He obeyed without further preamble. It was a disagreeable task, but he did not flinch from it, though well aware that the gruesome details would shock one of his hearers inexpressibly. Divested of the loud-sounding phrases with which a country reporter loves to clothe any incident of a sensational character, the newspaper added nothing to the facts already related by Betty Jackson and Police-constable Leadbitter, except a letter written and signed by the deceased man, in which he declared he had taken his own life because he was suffering from an incurable disease. It was only when the succeeding issue of the Nuttonby Gazette was scanned, with its report of the adjourned inquest, that new light was vouchsafed.

The coroner was a Mr. Hill, a local solicitor; a Dr. Scaife, from Bellerby, who had conducted a post-mortem examination, had excited Mr. Hill's ire by his excessive caution in describing the cause of death.

"I found no symptoms of what is popularly known as 'incurable disease,'" said the doctor. "The brain, heart, liver, lungs, and internal organs generally were in a fairly healthy state except for ordinary post-mortem indications. Death by hanging is usually capable of clear diagnosis. There is excessive fluidity of the blood, with hyperæmia of the lungs. The right side of the heart is engorged, and the left nearly empty. The mucous membrane of the trachea is injected, and appears of a cinnabar-red color. The abdominal veins are congested, and apoplexy of the brain is present as a secondary symptom. Contrary to common belief, the eyes do not start from the head, and the tongue seldom protrudes beyond the teeth. Indeed, the expression of the face does not differ from that seen in other forms of death, and, in this connection, it must be remembered that death, the result of disease, may present all the signs of death by suffocation. The body showed few of these indices."

"Would you mind telling us what you are driving at, Dr. Scaife?" the coroner had asked. "Here is a man found hanging in his house, leaving a letter addressed to me in which he states his intention beyond a doubt. Do you wish the jury to believe that his death may nevertheless have been a natural one?"

"No," was the reply. "I do not say that. But the absence of certain symptoms, and the presence of others, make it essential that I should state that Mr. Garth might just as well have died from apoplexy as from strangulation."

"Are we to understand that Mr. Garth may have died from apoplexy and afterwards hanged himself?"

"That would be nonsense," said Dr. Scaife.

"I agree, most emphatically. Do you refuse to certify as to the cause of death?"

"No. I am merely fulfilling a duty by pointing out what I regard as discrepancies in the post-mortem conditions. I looked for signs of organic disease. There was none."

Evidently, coroner and doctor were inclined to be testy with each other, and the newspaper report left the impression that Dr. Scaife was a hair-splitter. In the result, a verdict of "Suicide, while in a state of unsound mind," was returned.

There followed a description of the interment in Bellerby churchyard of "the mortal remains of Stephen Garth," when the vicar read a "modified form of the burial service," while the "continued absence from Elmdale of the dead man's wife and daughter," was referred to without other comment.

When Armathwaite laid aside the second newspaper, no one spoke for a minute or more. Percy Whittaker was seemingly interested in the effort of a fly to extract nutriment from a lump of sugar; Marguérite Ogilvey was staring at vacancy with wide-open, terror-laden eyes; Armathwaite himself appeared to be turning over the baffling problem in his mind.

At last, Whittaker stirred uneasily.

"What time does the post leave here, Meg?" he inquired. "I want to send Edie a line. She'll have a bad fit of the jumps if she hears from neither of us to-morrow."

CHAPTER VIII

WHEREIN PERCY WHITTAKER PROVES HIMSELF A MAN OF ACTION

The rather bizarre question startled the girl out of her melancholy thoughts. She looked at Whittaker as though she had completely forgotten his presence.

"The post," she repeated. "There is no post out of Elmdale this evening. Miggles passed through the village hours ago."

"Miggles?"

"He's the postman. We either see him ourselves or leave letters at Thompson's, the grocer's, before four o'clock."

"Then neither letter nor telegram can be dispatched to-night?"

"Yes. If you care to pay mileage to Bellerby, and the message is handed in before eight, Thompson will send a boy with a telegram."

Whittaker glanced at his watch. The hour was half-past six.

"How far is Bellerby?" he said. "Tell me in terms of the clock, not in miles, which, as a method of reckoning in Yorkshire, conveys a sense of infinity."

"A boy can bicycle there in half an hour."

"Then, footsore as I am, I shall hie me to Thompson's."

"Why not write your telegram here, and Betty will take it."

"No, thanks. I'll see to it myself. Then, if it doesn't reach Edie to-night, I can place a hand on my heart and vow I did all man could do, and failed."

"You are not forgetting that I have written to her?"

"No. Don't you see? A letter from you complicates matters even more. If she hears from Meg, and not a word is said about Percy, she'll wonder what has become of little me. I suppose Thompson's shop is not 'a nice bit' removed from the village?"

"It is opposite the Fox and Hounds Inn. You can walk there in two minutes."

Armathwaite, who had risen, and was staring through the window during this brief colloquy, was struck by the quietly pertinacious note in Whittaker's voice. Moreover, he was listening carefully, since there was some faint trace of an accent which had a familiar sound in his ears. He waited, until the younger man had gone out and was walking gingerly down the garden path; progress downhill must have been a torture to sore toes, yet Whittaker was strangely determined to send that unnecessary telegram in person—unnecessary, that is, in view of the fact that a message dispatched next morning would have served the same purpose. Why? Armathwaite found that life bristled with interrogatives just then.

Turning to look at Marguérite, he said:

"Your friend doesn't like me."

She did not attempt to fence with him. Somehow, when her eyes met his, a new strength leaped in her heart.

"Percy flatters himself on the ease with which he follows the line of least resistance, but in reality he is a somewhat shallow and transparent person," she answered.

"There is a transparency of shallowness which occasionally hides a certain depth of mud."

"Oh, he means no harm! His widowed sister, Mrs. Suarez, is a great stickler for the conventions, and she has infected him with her notions. She is the 'Edie' he speaks of. My chum is a younger sister, Christabel."

"Suarez? An unusual name in England."

"She married a Calcutta merchant. The Whittakers are Anglo-Indians."

Armathwaite smiled. He knew now whence came that slightly sibilant accent. Whittaker was a blonde Eurasian, a species so rare that it was not surprising that even a close observer should have failed to detect the "touch of the tar-brush" at first sight. From that instant Armathwaite regarded him from an entirely new view-point. The Briton who has lived many years in the East holds firmly to the dogmatic principle that in the blend of two races the Eurasian is dowered with the virtues of neither and the vices of both. More than ever did he regret the qualms of the conventional Mrs. Suarez which had brought Percy Whittaker to Elmdale that day.

"I'm sorry he deems it advisable to distrust me," he went on. "How long have you been acquainted with the family?"

"Ever since I went to school with Christabel at Brighton. She often came here during the summer holidays; and I used to visit her at Whitsuntide."

"They are aware of your change of name, of course?"

"Yes. How could it be otherwise?"

"A thoughtless question indeed. The notion was flitting through my mind that no one in Elmdale knew of it, or the fact was bound to have been made public at the inquest. The doctor who gave evidence—was he your regular medical attendant?"

"He was an intimate friend rather than a doctor. He knew dad so well that he would scout the idea of suicide. Perhaps that explains his hesitating statement to the coroner. Oh, Mr. Armathwaite, what does it all mean? Was ever girl plunged into such a sea of trouble? What am I to do?"

"Don't you think you ought to send for your mother?"

"If she were here now she could only say what I am saying—that my father is alive and in the best of health."

"Forgive me if I seem to be cross-examining you, but I am groping blindly towards some theory which shall satisfy two conditions wholly irreconcilable at present. Your mother and you went away from Elmdale, leaving your father here. Do you remember the exact reason given for your departure?"

"One day dad asked me to read some passages from a French treatise on Basque songs. It was rather technical stuff, and I stumbled over the translation, so he said I was losing my French, and that mother and I should go to Paris for a few weeks, and do a round of theaters. Of course, I was delighted—what girl wouldn't be? I couldn't pack quickly enough. When Paris emptied, towards the end of June, we went to Quimper, in Brittany. And there was another excuse, too. About that time we received news of the legacy, and dad thought we should get accustomed to the change of name more readily in a foreign country."

"How long did you remain abroad?"

"Nearly three months. But dad joined us within a fortnight of our departure from England. He only remained at home to finish a book and clear up the lawyer's business about the money."

"After your return, what happened?"

"We had a month in London. Then my people took a house in Cornwall, near the village of Warleggan, a place tucked in beneath the moors, just as Elmdale is. Dad explained that he wanted to study the miracle plays at first hand, because the remnants of the language possessed by the old inhabitants were more helpful than grammars and Oxford translations."

"Your mother raised no difficulties about the change of residence?"

"Not the least. In a way, it was rather agreeable, both to mother and me. Here we saw very few people. In Warleggan, where dad's pen-name, now his own legally, gave him some social standing, the county families called. We were richer, too, and could afford to entertain, which we never did while in Elmdale."

Armathwaite passed a hand over his mouth and chin in a gesture of sheer bewilderment.

"I still hold strongly to the opinion that you should send for Mrs. Ogilvey," he said, striving to cloak the motive underlying the suggestion, since he was assured now that the half-forgotten tragedy of the Grange would speedily burst into a new and sinister prominence in far-off Warleggan. "If she were here she could direct my efforts to choke off inquirers. We may be acting quite mistakenly. She knows everything—I am convinced of that—and her appearance would, in itself, serve to put matters on a more normal basis."

Marguérite sprang to her feet. Her fine eyes blazed with uncontrollable excitement, and her voice held a ring of defiance.

"If my mother ought to come, why not my father?" she cried vehemently. "I know what you are thinking, but dare not say. You believe my father is a murderer? Is that it? You imagine that a man who would not wilfully harm a fly is capable of committing a dreadful crime and shielding himself under the assumption that he took his own life?"

"Isn't that rather unjust of you?" said Armathwaite.

"I'm not considering the justice or injustice of my words now. I am defending one whom I love. I——"

She choked, and buried her face in her hands. Bitterly aware that he was only adding to her woes, he nerved himself for the ungracious task.

"You are trying, like myself, to explain a set of extraordinary circumstances," he said. "Woman-like, you do not scruple to place on my shoulders the burden of your own vague suspicions. I am not so greatly concerned as you seem to imagine because of the possibility that your father may have killed someone. Unhappily, I myself have killed several men, in fair fight, and in the service of my country, but there is no blood-guiltiness on my conscience. Before I venture to describe any man as a murderer, I want to know whom he killed, and why."

He made this amazing statement with the calm air of a sportsman contrasting the "bags" of rival grouse moors. Even in her bitter distress the girl was constrained to gaze at him in wonderment.

"You think that the taking of human life may be justifiable?" she gasped.

"Naturally. If not, why do we honor great soldiers with pensions and peerages?"

"But that is in warfare, when nations are struggling for what they conceive to be their rights."

"Sometimes. The hardest tussle I was ever engaged in dealt with no more sacred trust than the safe-guarding of half a dozen bullocks. Certain fierce-whiskered scoundrels swore by the Prophet that they would rieve those cattle, and perhaps a rifle or two, with a collection of women's ornaments as a side line, while I was equally resolved that the lawful possessors thereof should not be harried. Fifteen men died in five minutes before the matter was settled in accordance with my wishes, and I accounted for three of them. I am not boasting of the achievement. It was a disagreeable necessity. I tell you of it now merely to dissipate any notion you may have formed as to my squeamishness in looking unpleasant facts squarely in the face. A man died here two years ago, and it would be sheer folly to pretend that your father knew nothing about it. I believe you will find that the dead man not only wore Mr. Garth's clothes, but bore such a close facial and physical resemblance to him that people who had known him half a lifetime were deceived. Then, there is the letter read by the coroner. I take it for granted that it was in your father's handwriting. If these things are true, and common sense tells me that we ought to go on that assumption, and on no other, Mr. Garth will surely be called upon to explain why he endeavored to hoodwink the authorities. If he comes here within the next few days he will certainly be arrested. That is why I ask you to send for your mother. Everything points to the belief that she knows why you left Elmdale. I reject the legacy theory in toto. By a strange coincidence, your parents may have had some money left to them by will about that time. If so, they merely took advantage of the fortunate chance which enabled them to explain the change of name without any violent wrenching of the probabilities. One word more to define my own position in this matter. I don't care tuppence whether or not your father killed anyone, or why. My sole concern is for you. I am responsible for the whole wretched muddle. Had I not gratified an impish taste for ferreting out mysteries, I would have allowed Betty Jackson to smuggle you out of the house yesterday. Had I obeyed the conventions—those shackles on the wayward-minded devised by generations of careful mammas—I would have bundled you off last night, or, if common charity forbade, sent you away at daybreak. Then, nothing would have happened, except that I should be burdened with a secret, no new thing in my life. Now, will you send for Mrs. Ogilvey?"

"No," came the instant reply.

"Despite Mr. Percy Whittaker's warning, will you trust me so far as to explain your reason for refusing?"

"What do you mean by 'Percy Whittaker's warning'? I have told you nothing of what he said."

"I understand the type of man. He could no more refrain from suggesting that I was actuated by some underhanded motive than a flea-ridden dog from scratching."

"Please, don't pick a quarrel with Percy on my account," she pleaded tearfully.

"On your account I shall suffer Percy, even though he bray me in a mortar."

"Well, then, I'm—I'm sorry if I turned on you a little while ago. I apologize. You are really the only one I can appeal to for help at this moment. It was just because I felt the truth of all that you have said that I tried to force the same confession from you. Heaven help me, I am compelled to believe that my poor father got himself involved in some dreadful crime. It will all come out now. If the police get hold of him he will be put in prison. I must save him. Never did daughter love a father more than I love mine, and I'll sacrifice everything, reputation, happiness, even life itself, for his sake. And that is why my mother must not come here. I shall remain, and she will stay in Cornwall so as to safeguard him, if need be. You have no idea what an innocent he is in worldly affairs. If—if he had to escape—to get away from some foreign country—he could never manage it without her assistance. Don't you see, the decision must rest with me? I'll write to mother, and tell her what we know, and arrange some plan with her whereby dad will be able to avoid arrest. Oh, I can't make things clearer, but you are so kind and nice that you will understand—and help! Say you'll help, and I'll not cry any more—but be brave—and confident!"

While uttering that broken appeal she had come near, and a timid hand now rested on his shoulder. He looked down into her swimming eyes and saw there the perfect faith of a child. Never was man more tempted to take a woman in his arms and kiss away her fears than was Robert Armathwaite at that instant, but he recoiled from the notion as though a snake had reared its basilisk head from out of a bed of sweet-scented flowers. Nevertheless, he placed his hands on her shoulders, and now his left arm was entwined with her right arm, and they stood there in unconsciously lover-like pose.

"I'm glad you said that, little girl," he said quietly. "I shall not disappoint you, depend on that. If we have to break every statute therein made and provided, we'll save your father from the consequences of his own blundering or wrong-doing. Now, leave everything to me. If strangers, other than the police, ask you questions, refer them to your 'cousin.' Remember, you know nothing and can tell nothing as to bygone events, while you can say, if a demand is made for your father's present address, that I have advised you not to supply it. We must not appear to be actually defying the authorities. Our rôle is one of blank ignorance, combined with a pardonable curiosity to discover what all the fuss is about. I must not figure as a hindrance to inquiry, but merely as a distant relative who objects to your being bothered by a matter of which you, at least, have no knowledge. Now, one thing more—I want to see your father's handwriting. Will you give me the envelope which contained his letter?"

"Better still," said Marguérite, drying her eyes with a scrap of lace which was supposed to be a pocket-handkerchief, "I'll give you the letter itself. You'll find it a highly incriminating document."

To reach the letter, which she had tucked into a waistbelt, she had to withdraw the other hand from Armathwaite's shoulder. He had no excuse to hold her any longer in that protecting way, and his own hands fell. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he became aware that Percy Whittaker was gazing at them through the window.

His first impulse was to tell his companion of this covert espionage, for it was nothing less. The two were talking in the drawing-room, so Whittaker had purposely walked past the porch in order to look in at them. Then he decided that the girl had worries in plenty without embroiling her with one who was admittedly an admirer, so he indulged in a little bit of acting on his own account.

When she produced the letter, he turned his back on the window, ostensibly to obtain a better light, and, at the same time, drew slightly to one side. The handwriting was scholarly but curiously legible, betraying the habit of a dabbler in strange words who printed rather than wrote, lest some playful compositor should invent a new and confounding philology.

The text certainly afforded a weird commentary on the circumstances which laid at the writer's door responsibility for an audacious crime. It ran:

"My Darling Meg,—Chester has been a bookish city since the days of Julius Cæsar. I have small doubt, if one dug deep in its foundations, one would come across an original manuscript in J. C.'s own fist. I would impose a lighter task, however. Rummage one or two old bookshops, and get me Wentworth Webster's 'Basque Legends,' published in London in 1877 and 1879. I am hungering for it. Find it quickly, and come home. I need your sharp eyes.—Yours ever,

"Dad."

Marguérite watched Armathwaite's face while he read.

"Enough to hang anybody, isn't it?" she cried, with dolorous effort to speak in lighter vein.

"May I retain this? I shall take good care of it."

"Keep it as a souvenir. The identical book is lying on the library table."

Yet her mobile face clouded again, since it could not be denied that her father knew well that the book was in the Elmdale house, and was deliberately ignoring its existence there.

Armathwaite affected to look through the window.

"Hullo!" he said. "Whittaker has come back."

Whittaker, standing sideways, seemingly discovered them simultaneously. He came in.

"Thompson speaks a language of his own," he drawled; "but the dispatch of a boy on a bicycle, and the resultant charge of three shillings, gave color to my belief that he understood the meaning of 'telegram.' Otherwise, his remarks were gibberish."

"Percy," said Marguérite gravely, "Mr. Armathwaite and I have had a serious talk while you were out. He advised me to send for my mother, but, for various reasons, I have decided to fight this battle myself, with your aid, and Mr. Armathwaite's, of course."

Whittaker hesitated perceptibly before he spoke again. Like all neurotics, he had to flog himself into decision.

"I fully expected something of the sort, Meg," he said at last. "As I don't approve of the present state of affairs, I took it on myself to ask Edie to wire Mrs. Ogilvey, bidding her travel north by the next train."

"You didn't dare!" breathed the girl, whose very lips whitened with consternation.

"Oh, yes, I dared all right! A fellow must assert himself occasionally, you know. I can see plainly that you intend remaining in Elmdale till the mystery you have tumbled into is cleared up. In that case, your mother is the right person to take hold of the situation. You'll be vexed with me, no doubt, and tell me that I had no business to interfere, but I've thought this thing out, and I'm backing my judgment against yours. In a week, or less, you'll thank me. See if you don't."

"I shall never forgive you while I have breath in my body," she said, speaking with a slow laboriousness that revealed the tension of her feelings far more than the mere words.

"I was sure you'd say that, and must put up with it for the time being. Anyhow, the thing is beyond our control now, and you know Edie well enough to guess that she'll do as I tell her."

"What did you tell her? I have a right to ask."

"I kept a copy of the message," he said with seeming nonchalance. "I'll read it: 'Meg greatly disturbed by rumors concerning death which occurred in Grange two years ago. Telegraph her mother at once, and recommend immediate journey to Elmdale.' Unless I'm greatly mistaken, that will bring Mrs. Ogilvey here without delay, especially when Edie adds her own comments."

Marguérite sank into a chair. Her sky had fallen. She was too unnerved now to find relief even in tears. She continued to glower at Whittaker as though he had become some fearsome and abhorrent object. Evidently, however, he had steeled himself against some such attitude on her part.

"Don't forget there's two to one in this argument, Meg," he said, sitting down and producing a cigarette. "Since Mr. Armathwaite has elected to be your champion after a very brief acquaintance, I must point out that, by your own admission, he recommended the same thing. The only difference is that while he talked I acted."

For a little time there was silence. Whittaker, brazening the thing out, lighted the cigarette. Armathwaite, unable to indulge the impulse which suggested the one effective way in which this decadent half-breed could be restrained from future interference, could not trust himself to speak. As for the girl, she seemed to be tongue-tied, but her laboring breath gave eloquent testimony of surcharged emotions.