having extinguished the lantern, and
bestowed it in another pocket, he caught up his burden and began to
walk up the road at a leisurely pace.

His terrors had cooled, but nevertheless he wished himself well out
of the scrape. The report of the gun still rang in his ears and in
fancy he could hear again the buzz of that bullet by his ear. More
than once a shadow lying across the white road gave him a twinge of
fear; and when a placid cow poked its nose over the hedge above him,
and lowed confidentially, he leapt almost out of his skin.

The task before him, too, gave him no small anxiety. The directions
in the letter were plain enough, but not so the intention of Mrs.
Goodwyn-Sandys. Did she mean him to elope with her? He did not care
to face the question. The Admiral, though an indulgent father, was
not extravagant; and Sam had but seven-and-sixpence in his pocket.
This was an excellent sum for long whist at threepenny points, but
would hardly defray the cost of an elopement. Besides, he did not
want to elope.

"No _words_ of mine will repay you." Now he came to consider, these
words wore an awkward look. Good Heavens! he had a mind to drop
the portmanteau and run home. What had he done to be tempted so?
And why had these people ever come to Troy?

Ah! Sam, that was the question we should have asked ourselves months
ago. Some time before, at a concert in the Town Hall, I remember
that Mr. Moggridge sang the line--

"Too late the balm when the heart is broke!"

And a Trojan voice at the back assented--

"A durn sight."

Why had we been denied that perspicacity now?

So with a heavy burden, and heavier conscience (both of Mrs.
Goodwyn-Sandys' packing), he trudged forward, kicking up clouds of
dust that sparkled in the moonlight. Presently the ascent grew more
gradual, the hedges lower, and over their tops he could feel the
upland air breathing coolly from the sea. And now the sign-post hove
in sight, and the cross-roads stretching whitely into distance.

If we take the town of Troy as a base, lying north and south, this
sign-post forms the apex of a triangle which has two high-roads for
its remaining sides--the one road entering Troy from the north by the
hill which Sam had just ascended, the other running southwards and
ending with a steep declivity at no great distance from "The Bower."

It was by this southern road, of course, that Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys
would come. Sam looked along it, b