e they knew it, they had stepped into a way wider and more clearly
marked than the path which had brought them across the base of the
triangle of which the apex was the white stone by the hawthorns they had
never seen.

"It's a derelict Roman road," said Dick, as they walked along it towards
the cleft in the ridge. "See the small paving stones--here--there--and
you can feel 'em through the turf, here at the side. Most of this grass
has come since the railways took the cattle and the goods wagons off the
road. If the track is as good as this all the way----"

"What's that?" exclaimed Amaryllis, stopping and listening.

They were not more than three hundred yards from the point where the
road began to rise from the broad, level space of the moor spreading on
both sides of the old paved causeway in firm, close-nibbled grass,
interspersed with tufts of ling and heather, varied by rarer clumps of
gorse.

Not within a hundred yards in any direction could Dick find possible
cover from eyes descending the Bull's Neck.

The pair stood motionless, their hearts in their ears.

What they heard was unmistakable.

"A motor," said Amaryllis. "It's coming down."

She laid a hand on his shoulder, lifting her face to him.

When he raised his own from it, it was to watch the point where the
descending road took its last bend in the passage by which it had
traversed the ridge: the point where the approaching car must appear.

With flushed face and unflinching eyes, Amaryllis stood beside her
lover, her right hand still lying light on his shoulder, her sun-bonnet
fallen back, and the beauty of hair and features open to the coming
enemy.

As the blue car pushed its nose round the corner, and, turning, made
straight for the lower plateau, she glanced at Dick's face once more; to
see there an impersonal serenity which she might have found inhuman, had
she been a mere spectator of the drama which was coming. Being, however,
one of its persons, she felt herself enwrapped, and uplifted from fear
by the consciousness that a calm mind and a swift brain were supporting
each other in her service.

In her soul she cried already, not _Nous les aurons_, but _Il les a_.

"They'll see us," said Dick. "When I say 'run!' make for that
gorse-bush. I'll be behind, overdoing my limp. When I say 'down!'
fall--sprained ankle. I try to pull you up. You grip your ankle and
yell. They'll be out of the car and after us. When they're close, I
shall bo