hose door, hanging by one hinge, a blackened
track led across the dying grass to a door standing open outwards from
the structural excrescence which must be kitchen or scullery: these made
the sordid complement of the hypocrisy which exuded from the front.

That open door tempted him.

If only he could find some indication of her room! For that Amaryllis
was in that house he had less doubt than proof.

From the front the windows looked out at no great distance on the high
road. Signals were possible. They would lodge--imprison her at the back,
and surely on the upper floor. But even that, on this side, had six
windows, and he searched their flat glitter in vain for a peg to hang a
guess upon.

He had almost made up his mind to creep to that open scullery door and
try his luck when, from the third window from the right, behind the
glass there shone something white.

Now the first window in this row was next the end of the house; the
second, over the roof of the scullery; and the third had beneath it a
straight drop--some seventeen feet of unbroken wall--to the ground.

There was, indeed, three feet below the window-sill a rough
string-course, which might give to a fugitive a moment's finger-hold
before dropping to earth. But the fall between shoes and ground would be
some two and a half yards--a serious matter even for an acrobat so
placed that he could not watch his feet.

And how should man or woman escaping get even the moment's grasp of that
two-inch projection of stone?

It was, then, a safe room for a prison.

Bad glass refracted grotesquely the white shape behind it, but could not
make its movement unfeminine; and, when the lower sash was slowly raised
until it jammed about a foot above the sill, and two hands showed their
fingers under the frame straining to force it higher, Dick's heart leapt
to the belief that they were those pretty, expressive hands he had
watched so often in lazy pleasure.

He was upon the point of making a signal above the edge of his cover
when a footfall checked him.

A woman, dressed in a blue overall and carrying an empty japanned
bucket, was hurrying from the scullery along the grimy track to the
coal-shed.

This out-house was so near to the watcher, that he could hear the
pretty, eager, flaxen-haired, savage-faced little woman muttering to
herself as she scraped and shovelled. He could, after a fashion, speak
the Taal, and knew her more distinct phrases for European Dutc