vase Henshaw. That he was intimidating her, and using
his brother's death for that purpose, was beyond doubt, and the very fact
that Edith Morriston was a woman of uncommon courage and self-control,
one who in ordinary circumstances would be the last to give way to fear
or submit to bullying, showed how serious the matter had become.

Gifford on his part determined that this intolerable state of things must
come to an end, and that in spite of the command laid upon him by the
girl, he would now pit himself against her persecutor. He had given no
actual promise, and even if he had it would have been drawn from him in
ignorance of certain means which he possessed of help in this crisis.

And a significant circumstance which came to Gifford's knowledge a day or
two after his interview with Edith Morriston in the garden of Wynford,
was the cause of his beginning to take action without further delay.

Late on the next Sunday afternoon Gifford had gone for a country walk
which he had arranged to bring him round in time for the evening service
at the little village church of Wynford standing just outside the park
boundary. His way took him by well-remembered field-paths which, although
towards the end of his walk darkness had set in, he had no difficulty in
tracing. The last field he crossed brought him to a by-road joining the
highway which ran through Wynford, the junction being about a quarter of
a mile from the church. As he neared the stile which admitted to the road
he saw, on the other side of the hedge and showing just above it, the
head of a man. At the sound of his footsteps the man quickly turned,
and, as for a moment the fitful moonlight caught his face, Gifford was
sure he recognized Gervase Henshaw. But he took no notice and kept on his
way to the stile, which he crossed and gained the road. As he did so he
glanced back. A horse and trap was waiting there with Henshaw in it. He
was now bending down, probably with the object of concealing his
identity, and had moved on a few paces farther down the road.

Why was he waiting there? Gifford asked himself the obvious question with
a decidedly uneasy feeling. Henshaw the Londoner, on a Sunday evening,
waiting with a horse and trap in an unfrequented lane, a road which ran
nowhere but to a farm. What did it mean?

Naturally Gifford's suspicions connected Edith Morriston with the
circumstance, and yet he told himself the idea was monstrously
improbable. It was more li