o have known," he thought; and stooping, raised the girl,
still unconscious, tied the jacket by the arms round her neck, and
lifting her so that her waist was against his shoulder, set out to
windward, following the wheel-tracks.

Ten minutes' steady walking brought him to a bend in the path which
showed him the smoke he had been smelling, rising from the brick chimney
of a squat stone cottage which, rather than to nestle among the woods,
as well-behaved cottages should, seemed to shrink from the ragged timber
which surrounded it.

Beside the door, on a battered kitchen chair, sat a woman, reading what
Dick took for a newspaper. As he drew nearer she rose, and picked up a
tin wash-basin full of corn; and to the "Coop, coop, coop," of her
melancholy voice came clucking and scrambling chickens and hens in grand
flutter of greed.

Her eyes were on them as she scattered the grain, and Dick could see her
clearly enough to wish he had a man to deal with, before the sound of
his steps rose above the clamour of the poultry, and the woman looked
up.

If he had taken, at that moment, any interest in his own appearance, he
would have expected her to scream; for the chicken-feeder raised her
eyes to see, limping towards her, clad in muddy boots, torn grey
trousers and blue cotton shirt with streaks of drying blood down the
left breast, a tall, dark-haired man, carrying a woman hanging across
his shoulder.

And on the man's left cheek was a bruised cut, swelled, and clotted over
with dried blood, which had run down in a stream, flowing over the jaw
and ending at the collar; and all the way the drying rivulet had clung
to the dark stubble of a twenty-four hours' beard.

For the rest, sweat, dust, fasting and sleeplessness had made of this a
face whose horror was but increased by the alertness of the eyes, which
shone with so shocking a blueness that the woman, finding them unlike
any eyes which she had seen before, called them to herself, "evil
eyes--the eyes of a desperate man."

Being a person of some courage, she managed with an effort to keep her
hold of the basin and to scatter the remaining grains among the fowls
before addressing her terrific visitor.

"You're trespassin'," she said, with harsh self-possession. And from the
grass she picked up her cheap magazine and dropped it into the basin
which she had just slapped down on the bench by the door.

On the thin paper cover Dick read _The Penny Pansy_.

"It is not