d shortened. It was understood that a sum of money had
been laid on her at the last moment. She was favourite before the flag
was dropped and won by half a length. Miranda ran joyously down the
slope.

"What did I tell you, Harold? Aren't I wonderful? And have you found
Colonel Luttrell? You know Millie told us to look out for him?" she
cried all in a breath.

Luttrell had written to Lady Splay to say that he would try to motor to
Gatwick in time for the last races; and that he would look out for Jupp
and Dennis Brown, whom he had already met earlier in the week at a
dinner party given by Martin Hillyard.

"There's no sign of him," Harold Jupp answered.

There were two more races, but the party from Rackham Park did not wait
for them. They drove over the flat country through Crawley and Horsham
and came to the wooded roads between high banks where the foliage met
overhead, and to the old stone bridges over quiet streams. Harold Jupp
was home from Egypt, Dennis Brown from Salonika, and as the great downs,
with their velvet forests, seen now over a thick hedge, now in an
opening of branches like the frame of a locket, the marvel of the
English countryside in summer paid them in full for their peril and
endurance.

"I have a fortnight, Miranda," said Dennis, dropping a hand upon his
wife's. "Think of it!"

"My dear, I have been thinking of nothing else for months," she said
softly. Terrors there had been, nights and days of them, terrors there
would be, but she had a fortnight now, perfect in its season, and in the
meeting of old friends upon familiar ground--a miniature complete in
beauty, like the glimpses of the downs seen through the openings amongst
the boughs.

"Yes, a whole fortnight," she cried and laughed, and just for a second
turned her head away, since just for a second the tears glistened in her
eyes.

The car turned and twisted through the puzzle of the Petworth streets
and mounted on to the Midhurst road. The three indefatigable race-goers
found Lady Splay sitting with Martin Hillyard in the hall of Rackham
Park.

"You had a good day, I hope," she said.

"It was wonderful," exclaimed Dennis Brown. "We didn't make any money
except Miranda. But that didn't matter."

"All our horses were down the course," Harold Jupp explained. "They
weren't running in their form at all"; and he added cheerfully: "But the
war may be over before the winter, and then we'll go chasing and get it
all back."

Milli