to-night?"

"Out of this," whispered Colville, eagerly. "Out of Farlingford and
Suffolk before the morning if we can. I tell you there is a French
gunboat at Harwich, and another in the North Sea. It may be chance
and it may not. But I suspect there is a warrant out against you. And,
failing that, there is the 'Petite Jeanne' hanging about waiting to
kidnap you a second time. And Turner's at the bottom of it, damn him!"

Again Dormer Colville allowed a glimpse to appear of another man quite
different from the easy, indolent man-of-the-world, the well-dressed
adventurer of a day when adventure was mostly sought in drawing-rooms,
when scented and curled dandies were made or marred by women. For a
moment Colville was roused to anger and seemed capable of manly action.
But in an instant the humour passed and he shrugged his shoulders and
gave a short, indifferent laugh beneath his breath.

"Come," he said, "lead the way and I will follow. I have been out here
since eight o'clock and it is deucedly cold. I followed Turner from
Paris, for I knew he was on your scent. Once across the marsh we can
talk without fear as we go along."

Barebone obeyed mechanically, leading the way through the bushes to
the kitchen-garden and over an iron fencing on to the open marsh. This
stretched inland for two miles without a hedge or other fence but the
sunken dykes which intersected it across and across. Any knowing his
way could save two miles on the longer way by the only road connecting
Farlingford with the mainland and tapping the great road that runs north
and south a few miles inland.

There was no path, for few ever passed this way. By day, a solitary
shepherd watched his flocks here. By night the marsh was deserted.
Across some of the dykes a plank is thrown, the whereabouts of which is
indicated by a post, waist-high, driven into the ground, easily enough
seen by day, but hard to find after dark. Not all the dykes have a
plank, and for the most part the marsh is divided into squares, each
only connected at one point with its neighbour.

Barebone knew the way as well as any in Farlingford, and he struck out
across the thick grass which crunched briskly under the foot, for it was
coated with rime, and the icy wind blew in from the sea a freezing mist.
Once or twice Barebone, having made a bee-line across from dyke to dyke,
failed to strike the exact spot where the low post indicated a plank,
and had to pause and stoop down so as