se to the spot at which I am going to ask
you to wait, and taken the spikes off the fence. It's just a thousand to
one chance that if he's hard pressed for it and heads this way, they may
think that they have him in a trap and take it quietly. That is to say,
they'll wait to capture him instead of shooting."

"Say, you don't mean this seriously?" Richard exclaimed. "They can't do
more than arrest him as a trespasser, or something of that sort,
surely?"

Hunterleys laughed grimly.

"These men wouldn't stick at much," he told his companion. "They're hand
in glove with the authorities here. Anything they did would be hushed up
in the name of the law. These things are never allowed to come out. It
doesn't do any one any good to have them gossiped about. If they caught
Sidney and shot him, we should never make a protest. It's all part of
the game, you know. Now that is the spot I want you to stop at, exactly
where the mimosa tree leans over the path. But first of all, I'd turn
out your head-light."

They slowed down and stopped. Richard extinguished the acetylene
gas-lamp and mounted again to his place. Then he swung the car round and
crawled back upon the reverse until he reached the spot to which
Hunterleys had pointed.

"You're a good fellow, Richard," Hunterleys said softly. "We may have to
wait an hour or two, and it may be that nothing will happen, but it's
giving the fellow a chance, and it gives him confidence, too, to know
that friends are at hand."

"I'm in the game for all it's worth, anyway," Lane declared heartily.

He touched a button and the lights faded away. The two men sat in
silence, both turned a little in their seats towards the villa.

CHAPTER XXIX

FOR HIS COUNTRY

The minutes glided by as the two men sat together in the perfumed,
shadowy darkness. From their feet the glittering canopy of lights swept
upwards to the mountain-sides, even to the stars, but a chain of slowly
drifting black clouds hung down in front of the moon, and until their
eyes became accustomed to their surroundings it seemed to both of them
as though they were sitting in a very pit of darkness.

"It is possible," Hunterleys whispered, after some time, "that we may
have to wait for another hour yet."

Richard was suddenly tense. He sat up, and his foot reached for the
self-starter.

"I don't think you will," he muttered. "Listen!"

Almost immediately they were conscious of some commotion in the
direction of