huddling back
in the corner of the limousine, she clutched the frightened child to her
and gave implicit obedience to Merode's command to make no effort to
attract attention either by word or deed. And he, fancying that he had
thoroughly cowed her, withdrew the touch of the weapon from her temple,
but held it ready for possible use in the grip of his thin, strong hand.

For a time the limousine kept straight on in its headlong course, then,
of a sudden, it swerved to the left, the gleam of a river--all silver
with moonlight--struck up through a line of trees on one side of the
car, the blank unbroken dreariness of a stretch of waste land spread out
upon the other; and presently, by the slowing down of the motor, Ailsa
guessed that they were nearing their destination. They reached it a few
moments later, and a peep from the window, as the vehicle stopped,
showed her the outlines of a ruined watermill--ghostly, crumbling,
owl-haunted--looming black against the silver sky.

A crumbled wheel hung, rotten and moss-grown, over a dry water-course,
where straggling willows stretched out from the bank and trailed their
long, feathery ends a yard or so above the level of the weeds and
grasses that carpeted the sandy bed of it, and along its edge--once
built as a protection for the heedless or unwary, but now a ruin and a
wreck--a moss-grown wall with a narrow, gateless archway made an
irregular shadow on the moon-drenched earth. She saw that archway and
that dry water-course, and a new, strong hope arose within her.
Discretion had played its part; now it was time for Valour to take the
stage.

"Come, get out--this is the end," said Merode, as he unlatched the door
of the limousine and alighted. "You may yell here until your throat
splits, for all the good it will do you. Lanisterre, show us a light;
the path to the door is uncertain, and the floor of the mill is unsafe.
This way, if you please, Miss Lorne. Let me have the boy--I'll look
after him!"

"No, no!--not yet! Please, not yet!" said Ailsa, with a little catch in
her voice as she plucked his little lordship to her and smothered his
frightened cries against her breast. "Let me have him whilst I may--let
me hold him to--the last, Monsieur Merode. His mother trusts me. She
will want to know that I--I stood by him until I could stand no longer.
Please!--we are so helpless--I am so fond of him, and--he is such a very
little boy. Listen! You want me to write to Mr. Cleek; yo