"That you, Miss Maynard? Right! Pray do not distress yourself by undue
haste. We have ample time before us. There, let me help you in and make
you comfortable. Dixon, take the hoods off the lamps and get in behind.
Miss Maynard will sit with me."

Nugent, who was at the wheel, extended his hand, and when Violet had
settled herself at his side and the chauffeur had unveiled the great
acetylene lamps, he sent the car spinning for Ottermouth at half-speed.
But he avoided the road that would take him through the main street of
the little town, and struck into a series of country lanes that brought
them by a detour to The Hut, without having to pass more than a solitary
farmhouse.

"We are in luck so far," he said when they had swept up the drive and
he had assisted Violet to alight. "We didn't meet a soul all the way.
Dixon, have the car ready here. I shall want to take Miss Maynard back
to the Manor House presently. Now," he added, beckoning Violet to follow
him, "we will go round this way, please."

The girl, all her mind set on her purpose, obeyed like one in a dream.
She wanted to meet Leslie and bring him to reason. It mattered nothing
to her how she reached her goal so long as her task was swiftly
accomplished, and she knew that the shortest way to the sea was through
the grounds of The Hut. So without demur she followed Nugent round the
house to the lawns and gardens at the back.

"It would be best to be perfectly silent," her guide whispered as they
struck across the greensward. "My servants may not all have gone to bed
yet, or some one else might be about."

"I--I thought I heard something there," replied Violet, laying a hand on
his arm and glancing apprehensively at the spectral outline of the
grotto, the walls of which gleamed white amid the gloom of the
shrubbery.

"Only the breeze in the foliage," Nugent murmured hastily, and, taking
the girl's hand almost roughly, he hurried her to the door on to the
moor, opened it, and as quickly closed it when they had passed through.

"There!" he said in a tone of unaffected relief, "we shall find no more
obstacles in our way but a short walk through the heather and a scramble
down the steps to the beach. Chermside will be waiting for us at the
foot of Colebrook Chine."

But that prophecy was not to be verified. When at length they stood on
the pebbles of the shore the figure which emerged from a nook in the
cliff was not Leslie Chermside, but Bill Tuke, "the