y astounded expression on
it looking down into mine.

"In Heaven's name!" a well-known voice cried, "what are you doing here,
Bill?"

It was my cousin, Lord St. Nivel, a subaltern in the Coldstream Guards!

CHAPTER VII

CRUFT'S FOLLY

Looking over my cousin's shoulders were two other faces, one covered
with rough hair, and evidently belonging to a game-keeper, the other
the beautiful face of my cousin, Lady Ethel Vanborough, St. Nivel's
sister.

"Poor fellow!" she remarked sympathetically. "What have they been
doing to you?"

I could hardly believe my eyes, and passed my hand wearily across my
forehead.

St. Nivel turned to the keeper.

"Give me the brandy flask," he said.

The man produced it, and my cousin poured some out in the little silver
cup attached to it.

"It's a lucky thing for you, Bill," he observed, while I greedily drank
the brandy down, "that I thought of bringing this flask with me this
morning. Ethel was against it; she's a total abstainer."

"Except when alcohol is needed medicinally," she interposed in an
explanatory tone, "then it is another matter."

I now took a good look at her; she was wearing a short, tweed,
tailor-made shooting costume, and carried in her hand a light sixteen
bore shot gun.

"You look just about done," continued her brother. "Whatever has
happened to you?"

"You would look bad," I answered, "if you had had nothing to eat since
lunch yesterday."

St. Nivel was a soldier and man of action.

"Botley," he said to the keeper, "the sandwiches."

"Now," said the guardsman invitingly, when I had ravenously disposed of
my second sandwich, "tell us something about it."

I had just opened my lips to speak, when there came a great cry from
the roof of the tower above, and a black body shot past the little
window near which I was sitting.

We all ran to the window but could see nothing.

Then St. Nivel made a suggestion.

"Let us mount up to the roof," he said, "and see what is to be seen.
You, Botley, had better go down to the foot of the tower."

The keeper touched his forelock and commenced his descent of the spiral
staircase. Meanwhile, Lady Ethel, her brother and I mounted up to the
top.

We passed the room in which I had been imprisoned, and went up a very
much narrower flight of steps to the roof, coming out at a little door
which was standing open. The roof was flat and covered with lead.

"Take care how you tread," cried St. Nivel. "