, and dropped instantly into a little heap of
satin and dark-coloured velvet beside him in the darkness.

"No," she whispered softly. "I wondered what you were doing, and who
your companion might be. Send him away, Ross. I _must_ speak with you
alone!"

"All right." The inflection of voice was so identical with that of the
new lord of the manor as to make Dollops fairly jump at sound of it. He
would hardly have been able to believe the evidence of his own ears if
he had not seen this thing done before in those old Apache days, in the
Inn of The Twisted Arm, when the notorious Margot and her crew had run
them to earth and this was the only way out: "Get along there, Parsons.
There's nothing more to be seen now. You can meet me some time next
week--if things go all right with me and I'm not already swinging at the
end of a long rope! And we'll have another confab together. But you'd
better make yourself scarce now. There'll be a dickens of a kybosh if
they find we've broken parole, and I don't want you hauled into the
beastly thing. So long. And _listen--listen_: be careful--do!"

Dollops nodded his head forthwith, and by dint of wriggling and
scrambling made his exit from this astonishing pair, and, free of the
bare moorside at last, broke cover and started off at a good run,
wondering what the dickens they had stumbled into _now_.

Meanwhile the erstwhile Ross and his lady friend sat on behind the
furze-bush in their somewhat ridiculous predicament, and talked in
whispers.

"What is it you want to say to me?" said "Ross," a hint of sharpness in
his low-pitched voice. "That you should run this risk--it is madness,
Catherine--madness!"

"Nothing is madness that I could do for _your_ sake," she responded
passionately, putting a hand over his as it rested upon the brown earth,
and bending toward him. "Don't you know, Ross, haven't you guessed my
secret yet? Surely you must have seen it? I have tried to tell you with
my eyes, time and time again, and when I have caught that odd look in
yours when you looked at Cynthia. I felt my heart bound with gladness
that you did not care for her. And that has made me brave. Oh, my
dear--my dear! Listen to me, and do what I ask of you. If you _did_ kill
your father, Ross, that man down there at the Castle will make you swing
for it. I know it--I feel it here--here! Those penetrating eyes of his
can see beyond the veil of deception right down into your heart. If you
have done this