ept for your own people here, dad
would like you not to mention where you are going. He wants a little
peace, poor man."

"I won't tell a soul except my secretary," Jacob promised.

"Not even Jack," Lady Mary persisted.

"Very well. Not even Lord Felixstowe."

She rose, and he escorted her to the door.

"It's going to be such an adventure," she whispered, with a parting
look.

Jacob called Dauncey into the office.

"Stroke of luck, Dick," the former announced. "I shall be able to
do better than Marlingden--drop out of it altogether, in fact.
Felixstowe's people have asked me to go up and stay with them in
Scotland for a fortnight."

"Capital!" Dauncey exclaimed. "You'll be well out of the way there."

"I shall leave my address with you and with no one else, Dick. For a
fortnight you can consider me wiped off the face of the earth. Watch
the investment accounts closely and act on your own initiative if
necessary; but, above all things, see that Harris tries the new blight
cure on 'Mrs. Fitzpatrick.'"

CHAPTER XX

Jacob, sleepy-eyed and desperately hungry, tumbled out of the train, a
few mornings later, on to a lone stretch of platform, to find himself
confronted by an exceedingly pleasant sight. Only a few yards away, on
the other side of some white palings, Lady Mary, in a tartan skirt,
light coat and tartan tam-o'-shanter, was seated in a four-wheeled
dogcart, doing her best to control a pair of shaggy, excited ponies.

"Come along, Mr. Pratt," she called out, "and jump in as quickly as
you can. These little beggars aren't properly broken. The men here
will look after your luggage."

Jacob vaulted lightly over the paling and clambered up by her side.

"Capital!" she laughed. "Now I shall see what your nerves are like."

Jacob took off his hat and drew in a long breath of the fresh morning
air.

"I don't think you're going to frighten me," he said. "What a
country!"

Almost directly they turned off the main road into what was little
better than a cart track, across a great open moor, dotted everywhere
with huge granite stones, marvellous clumps of heather and streaks of
gorse. The sky was perfectly blue, and the wind came booming up from
where the moorland seemed to drop into the sea. There were no rubber
tyres on the wheels, and apparently no springs to speak of on the
cart. They swayed from side to side in perilous fashion, went down
into ruts, over small boulders of stone, through a str