satisfaction of his retreat this one small idea crystallized,
that he had not talked enough without disturbance to Lady Harman. The
thing he had to do was to talk to her some more. To go on with what he
had been saying. That thought arrested his steps. On that hypothesis
there was no reason whatever why he should go on to the station and
London. Instead----He stopped short, saw a convenient gate ahead, went
to it, seated himself upon its topmost rail and attempted a calm survey
of the situation. He had somehow to continue that conversation with Lady
Harman.

Was it impossible to do that by going back to the front door of Black
Strand? His instinct was against that course. He knew that if he went
back now openly he would see nobody but Sir Isaac or his butler. He must
therefore not go back openly. He must go round now and into the
pine-woods at the back of Black Strand; thence he must watch the garden
and find his opportunity of speaking to the imprisoned lady. There was
something at once attractively romantic and repellently youthful about
this course of action. Mr. Brumley looked at his watch, then he surveyed
the blue clear sky overhead, with just one warm tinted wisp of cloud. It
would be dark in an hour and it was probable that Lady Harman had
already gone indoors for the day. Might it be possible after dark to
approach the house? No one surely knew the garden so well as he.

Of course this sort of thing is always going on in romances; in the
stories of that last great survivor of the Stevensonian tradition, H.B.
Marriot Watson, the heroes are always creeping through woods, tapping at
windows, and scaling house-walls, but Mr. Brumley as he sat on his gate
became very sensible of his own extreme inexperience in such
adventures. And yet anything seemed in his present mood better than
going back to London.

Suppose he tried his luck!

He knew of course the lie of the land about Black Strand very well
indeed and his harmless literary social standing gave him a certain
freedom of trespass. He dropped from his gate on the inner side and
taking a bridle path through a pine-wood was presently out upon the
moorland behind his former home. He struck the high-road that led past
the Staminal Bread Board and was just about to clamber over the barbed
wire on his left and make his way through the trees to the crest that
commanded the Black Strand garden when he perceived a man in a velveteen
coat and gaiters strolling towards