at they are
trivial compared to those which come from its absence. As to the
building of large fleets of merchant submarines for the carriage of
food, that is a new departure which will be an additional insurance
against the danger which has left so dark a page in the history of our
country."

II. ONE CROWDED HOUR

The place was the Eastbourne-Tunbridge road, not very far from the Cross
in Hand--a lonely stretch, with a heath running upon either side. The
time was half-past eleven upon a Sunday night in the late summer. A
motor was passing slowly down the road.

It was a long, lean Rolls-Royce, running smoothly with a gentle purring
of the engine. Through the two vivid circles cast by the electric head-
lights the waving grass fringes and clumps of heather streamed swiftly
like some golden cinematograph, leaving a blacker darkness behind and
around them. One ruby-red spot shone upon the road, but no number-plate
was visible within the dim ruddy halo of the tail-lamp which cast it. The
car was open and of a tourist type, but even in that obscure light, for
the night was moonless, an observer could hardly fail to have noticed a
curious indefiniteness in its lines. As it slid into and across the
broad stream of light from an open cottage door the reason could be seen.
The body was hung with a singular loose arrangement of brown holland.
Even the long black bonnet was banded with some close-drawn drapery.

The solitary man who drove this curious car was broad and burly. He sat
hunched up over his steering-wheel, with the brim of a Tyrolean hat drawn
down over his eyes. The red end of a cigarette smouldered under the
black shadow thrown by the headgear. A dark ulster of some frieze-like
material was turned up in the collar until it covered his ears. His neck
was pushed forward from his rounded shoulders, and he seemed, as the car
now slid noiselessly down the long, sloping road, with the clutch
disengaged and the engine running free, to be peering ahead of him
through the darkness in search of some eagerly-expected object.

The distant toot of a motor-horn came faintly from some point far to the
south of him. On such a night, at such a place, all traffic must be from
south to north when the current of London week-enders sweeps back from
the watering-place to the capital--from pleasure to duty. The man sat
straight and listened intently. Yes, there it was again, and certainly
to the