es, while grave shadows threatened his
face. But presently his smiling, unquenchable good temper came to the
surface, and he gleefully tucked Melanie's hand under his arm.

"As I said before, you need a husband very badly."

"Oh, I don't know," she laughed.

The result of Aleck's moment of grave thought came a few days later,
with the arrival of two quietly-dressed, unostentatious men. He told
Melanie that one man was her chauffeur for the white machine, and the
other was an extra hand he had engaged for the return trip on the _Sea
Gull_. The chauffeur, however, for one reason or another, rarely took
the wheel, and could have been seen walking at a distance behind
Melanie whenever she stirred abroad. The extra hand for the _Sea Gull_
did just the same as the chauffeur.

From the day of the arrival of the manager, Mr. Hand's rather
mysterious but friendly temper underwent a change for the worse. He
not only continued silent, which might easily be counted a virtue, but
he became almost sulky, which could only be called a crime. There was
no bantering with Sallie in the kitchen, scarcely a friendly smile for
Agatha herself. Mr. Hand was markedly out of sorts.

On the morning following Mr. Straker's request that Hand should repair
the car, the manager found him tinkering in the carriage shed near the
church. The car was jacked up on a horse-block, while one wheel lay
near the road. Mr. Hand was as grimy and oily as the law allows,
working over the machinery with a sort of vicious earnestness. Mr.
Straker hovered around for a few moments, then addressed Hand in that
tone of pseudo-geniality that marks a certain type of politician.

"Look here, Colonel, I understand you were in the employ of that French
anarchist."

It was an unlucky moment for attack, though Mr. Straker did not at once
perceive it. Hand carefully wiped the oil from a neat ring of metal,
slid down on his back under the car and screwed on a nut. As Mr.
Straker, hands in pockets and feet wide apart, watched the mechanician,
there came through the silence and the sweet air the sound of thrushes
calling from the wood beyond. Mr. Straker craned his head to look out
at the church, then at the low stone wall, as if he expected to see the
songsters performing on a stage before a row of footlights. He turned
back to Mr. Hand.

"That's right, is it? You worked for the slippery Mounseer?"

"Uh-m," Hand grumbled, with a screw in his mouth. "Some