anced the discomfort of a tramp through the mud.

A rumor had reached the Court that the funeral of the murdered man
would, mayhap, take place this day, and Master Busy would not have
missed such an event for the world, not though the roads lay thick with
snow and the drifts rendered progress impossible to all save to the
keenest enthusiast. He for one was glad enough that his master had
seemed so unaccountably anxious for the company of his own serving men.
Sir Marmaduke had ever been overfond of wandering about the lonely woods
of Thanet alone.

But since that gruesome murder on the beach forty-eight hours ago and
more, both the quality and the yokels preferred to venture abroad in
company.

At the same time neither Master Busy nor young Courage Toogood could
imagine why Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse should endure such amazing
discomfort in order to attend the funeral of an obscure adventurer, who
of a truth was as naught to him.

Nor, if the truth were known, could Sir Marmaduke himself have accounted
for his presence here on this lonely road, and on one of the most
dismal, bleak and unpleasant afternoons that had ever been experienced
in Thanet of late.

He should at this moment have been on the other side of the North Sea.
The most elemental prudence should indeed have counseled an immediate
journey to Amsterdam and a prompt negotiation of all marketable
securities which Lady Sue Aldmarshe had placed in his hands.

Yet twice twenty-four hours had gone by since that awful night, when,
having finally relinquished his victim to the embrace of the tide, he
had picked his way up the chalk cliffs and through the terror-haunted
woods to his own room in Acol Court.

He should have left for abroad the next day, ere the news of the
discovery of a mysterious murder had reached the precincts of his own
park. But he had remained in England. Something seemed to have rooted
him to the spot, something to be holding him back whenever he was ready
to flee.

At first it had been a mere desire to know. On the morning following his
crime he made a vigorous effort to rally his scattered senses, to walk,
to move, and to breathe as if nothing had happened, as if nothing lay
out there on the sands of Epple, high and dry now, for the tide would
have gone out.

Whether he had slept or not since the moment when he had crept
stealthily into his own house, silently as the bird of prey when
returning to its nest--he could not have said.