ghter as he had known on the road
between Oxford and Chesham.

Twenty minutes' walking led him up a sharp rise to the level of the
road, from which he looked down into the corresponding hollow on the
other side. And there he saw what the little man of "The Coach and
Horses" had described: a long, low stone house of two stories, facing
south-west; windows neatly curtained, and fitted--an exotic touch--with
_persiennes_; gravelled walks and smooth grass plots, a tree or two,
shrubs and a few garden saplings; a garage big enough for one car which
would look bigger than its envelope as it came out; and a pretentious
gate--suburban villa half-heartedly aping country house--guarding the
drive.

He stood in the road, boldly looking down at the blinded windows,
thinking how common these houses were; in many parts of England he had
seen them, grinning, sulking, boasting, counterfeiting, smirking at a
world that would not look twice.

But this house seemed to leer at you through a filthy parade of modesty.

On a bench in the shade of a large tree not more than thirty yards from
the road was a patch of colour: a woman's garden hat, bound with an
orange scarf. Since it was not hers, it seemed the best thing in sight.

Fearing observation, he turned from the house, walking eastward.

The copse of which he had been told lay not only behind the building to
the north-east, but encroached on its eastern side so as to intervene
with the tops of its younger trees between him and the back of the
building.

He followed the highway until he came to a field of ragged oats running
from the road northward behind the little wood. Vaulting the stone fence
at the roadside, he scrambled down the steep bank. Soon he was among the
trees, making his way to the left towards the rear of "The Myrtles."
Bushes and tree-trunks gave him cover until he was within five yards of
the low wall of unmortared stone which made an irregular and dilapidated
fence about the back of the house.

From the wood's edge to the wall he crawled with the speed and silence
of a Houssa scout, and, once in shelter of the stones, was not long in
finding a crevice roughly funnel-shaped, which gave him, with small
eyepiece, a wide outlook.

Wretched grass-plots trodden into patches of bare earth, ashes, bones,
potato-parings, a one-legged wheelbarrow; a brick dustbin overfilled
till its rickety wooden lid gaped to show the mouthful it could not
swallow; a coal-shed from w