old careless gaiety came back as they
sat at lunch together in the long low room of an old village inn,
while Mabel herself forgot her anxiety about Dolly and caught the
infection of his high spirits. They walked back through little groups
of low white houses, where the air was sweet with the smell of pine
and cattle, and the men were splitting firewood and women gossiping at
the doors, and then across the fields, where the peasants looked up to
mutter a gruffly civil '_G'n Abend_' as they turned the ox-plough at
the end of the furrow. Now and then they came upon one of the large
crucifixes common in the district, and stopped to examine the curious
collection of painted wooden emblems grouped around the central
figure, or passed a wayside shrine like a large alcove, with a woman
or child kneeling before the gaudily coloured images, but not too
absorbed in prayer to cast a glance in the direction of the footsteps.

The sun had set when they reached the old gatehouse again, and saw
through its archway the narrow little street with its irregular
outlines in bold relief against a pale-green evening sky.

'I haven't tired you, have I?' said Mark, as they drew near the
striped frontier post at the entrance to the bridge.

'No, indeed,' she said; 'it has been only too delightful. Why,' she
exclaimed suddenly, 'I thought we were the only English people in
Laufingen. Mark, surely that's a fellow-countryman?'

'Where?' said Mark. The light was beginning to fade a little, and at
first he only saw a stout little man with important pursed lips
trimming the oil-lamp which lit up the covered way over the bridge.

'Straight in front; in the angle there,' said Mabel; and even at that
distance he recognised the man whose face he had hoped to see no more.
His back was turned to them just then, but Mark could not mistake the
figure and dress. They were Vincent Holroyd's!

In one horrible moment the joyous security he had felt only the moment
before became a distant memory. He stopped short in an agony of
irresolution. What could he do? If he went on and Holroyd saw them, as
he must, his first words would tell Mabel everything. Yet he must face
him soon; there was no escape, no other way but across that bridge. At
least, he thought, the words which ruined him should not be spoken in
his hearing; he could not stand by and see Mabel's face change as the
shameful truth first burst upon her mind.

His nerves were just sufficiently under