en farther than ever into the depths of the thick,
slow-moving clouds, and the darkness was almost opaque. To the left the
great Common stretched out, a thing of gloom and shadows, blotted here
and there with deeper black where the furze clumps were thickest or the
full-leaved tree reached up above the skyline. On the right, the blank
wall rose, flat, smooth as your hand, so tall it shut out even the
lights in the windows of the Grange; and between these lay Mulberry
Lane, a black funnel leading on to deeper darkness and the shapelessness
of crowded trees.

In the shadows of that narrow alley made by the wall and the furze
bushes Cleek crouched a moment and listened before he ventured to move
another inch. Not a sound, not the merest ghost of a sound. If the woman
were in the immediate neighbourhood, she was keeping extremely quiet;
therefore it behoved him to progress with infinite caution. Inch by
inch, on hands and knees, he moved up that narrow alley, stopping every
now and then to prick up his ears and listen breathlessly. But upon
every occasion he found the stillness yet unbroken and no sign or sound
of breathing life anywhere about him.

Two minutes passed--three--five--half a dozen, and still all was as it
had been in the beginning. By this time this slow, cautious creeping had
carried him over two thirds of the distance, and he was now within ten
or eleven feet of the hidden gate; and still no sound or sign of the
woman's return. Indeed, no sound of any sort until, with one hand
outstretched and one knee lifted to edge forward yet a trifle more, he
paused abruptly, sucked in his breath, and huddled softly down, becoming
but a mere dark heap on the damp, dark grass.

A sound had come at last! The unmistakable sound of some one moving
cautiously through close-pressing branches and crowded leaves.

It was so faint a thing that ears less keen than his might not have
detected it. Yet, at the first rustle of the first stirred leaf he
caught the hiss of it and knew it was not the woman that made it; for
the prickly foliage of furze makes no rustling sound when a passing
body brushes it, and there was nothing upon the outer side of the wall
_but_ furze that was low enough to be brushed in passing.

Clearly, then, the sound was from the other side of the wall, from
within the grounds of the Grange! Some one was coming to keep the
tryst--some one who, evidently, had been delayed past an agreed time,
otherwise the w