o the house, to leave it by another door and to meet me in the
wood in half an hour. We often made these assignations, of course,
and generally thought them great fun, but this time the question was
serious, and I didn't want the wrong thing done in a hurry. It was a
question whether anything could be done to undo an experiment we
both vaguely felt to be dangerous, and she especially thought, after
reflection, that interference would make things worse. She thought the
old sportsman, having been dared to do something, would certainly not
be dissuaded by the very man who had dared him or by a woman whom he
regarded as a child. She left me at last in a sort of despair, but I
lingered with a last hope of doing something, and drew doubtfully near
to the heart of the wood; and there, instead of the silence I expected,
I heard a voice. It seemed as if the Squire must be talking to himself,
and I had the unpleasant fancy that he had already lost his reason in
that wood of witchcraft. But I soon found that if he was talking he was
talking with two voices. Other fancies attacked me, as that the other
was the voice of the tree or the voices of the three trees talking
together, and with no man near. But it was not the voice of the tree.
The next moment I knew the voice, for I had heard it twenty times across
the table. It was the voice of that doctor of yours; I heard it as
certainly as you hear my voice now."

After a moment's silence, he resumed: "I left the wood, I hardly knew
why, and with wild and bewildered feelings; and as I came out into the
faint moonshine I saw that old lawyer standing quietly, but staring at
me like an owl. At least, the light touched his red hair with fire, but
his square old face was in shadow. But I knew, if I could have read it,
that it was the face of a hanging judge."

He threw himself on the bench again, smiled a little, and added: "Only,
like a good many hanging judges, I fancy, he was waiting patiently to
hang the wrong man."

"And the right man--" said Paynter mechanically. Treherne shrugged his
shoulders, sprawling on the ale bench, and played with his empty pot.

IV. THE CHASE AFTER THE TRUTH

Some time after the inquest, which had ended in the inconclusive verdict
which Mr. Andrew Ashe had himself predicted and achieved, Paynter was
again sitting on the bench outside the village inn, having on the little
table in front of it a tall glass of light ale, which he enjoyed much
more as