e my desire without
restraint, the longing to gape had surprisingly vanished.

"Going to bed?" Jervaise suggested.

"Yes. Bed's the best place, just now," I lied.

"Right oh! Good-night, old chap," Ronnie said effusively.

I pretended to be going upstairs and they did not wait for me to
disappear. As soon as they had left the Hall, I sneaked down again,
recovered from the cloak-room the light overcoat I had worn on our
expedition to the Farm--I have no idea to whom that overcoat
belonged--borrowed a cap, and let myself out stealthily by the front door.

As I quietly shut the door behind me, a delicious whiff of night-stock
drifted by me, as if it had waited there for all those long hours seeking
entrance to the stale, dry air of the Hall.

* * * * *

And it must have been, I think, that scent of night-stock which gave me
the sense of a completed episode, or first act, as I stood alone, at last,
on the gravel sweep before the Hall. Already the darkness was lifting. The
dawn was coming high up in the sky, a sign of fair weather.

I have always had a sure sense of direction, and I turned instinctively
towards the landmark of my promised destination, although it was invisible
from that side of the Hall--screened by the avenue of tall forest trees,
chiefly elms, that led up from the principal entrance to the Park. I had
noticed one side road leading into this avenue as I had driven up from the
station the previous afternoon, and I sought that turning now, with a
feeling of certainty that it would take me in the right direction. As,
indeed, it did; for it actually skirted the base of "Jervaise Clump,"
which touched the extreme edge of the Park on that side.

As I cautiously felt my way down the avenue--it was still black dark under
the dark trees--and later up the tunnel of the side road which I hit upon
by an instinct that made me feel for it at the precise moment when I
reached the point of its junction with the avenue--I returned with a sense
of satisfaction to the memory of the last four hours. I was conscious of
some kind of plan in the way the comedy of Brenda's disappearance had been
put before us. I realised that, as an art form, the plan was essentially
undramatic, but the thought of it gave me, nevertheless, a distinct
feeling of pleasure.

I saw the experience as a prelude to this lonely adventure of mine--a
prelude full of movement and contrast; but I had no premonition of