nces; and finally, leaning heavily
on his stick, he plodded back to the cottage, noticing, as he drew near,
the absence of the motor-car from its place of shelter. Miles Furley
was seated in his armchair, with a cup of tea in his hand and Mrs. West
fussing over him, as Julian raised the latch and dragged himself into
the sitting room. They both turned around at his entrance. Furley
dropped his teaspoon and Mrs. West raised her hands above her head and
shrieked. Julian sank into the nearest chair.

"Melodrama has come to me at last," he murmured. "Give me some tea--a
whole teapotful, Mrs. West--and get a hot bath ready."

He waited until their temporary housekeeper had bustled out of the room.
Then he concluded his sentence.

"I have been sandbagged," he announced impressively, and proceeded to
relate the night's adventure to his host.

"This," declared Julian, about a couple of hours later, as he helped
himself for the second time to bacon and eggs, "is a wonderful tribute
to the soundness of our constitutions. Miles, it is evident that you and
I have led righteous lives."

"Being sandbagged seems to have given you an appetite," Furley observed.

"And a game leg seems to have done the same for you," Julian rejoined.
"Did the doctor ask you how you did it?"

Furley nodded.

"I just said that I slipped on the marshes. One doesn't talk of such
little adventures as you and I experienced last night."

"By the bye, what does one do about them?" Julian enquired. "I feel a
little dazed about it all, even now living in an unreal atmosphere and
that sort of thing, you know. It seems to me that we ought to have out
the bloodhounds and search for an engaging youth and a particularly
disagreeable bully of a man, both dressed in brown oilskins and--"

"Oh, chuck it!" Furley intervened. "The intelligence department in
charge of this bit of coast doesn't do things like that. What you want
to remember, Julian, is to keep your mouth shut. I shall have a chap
over to see me this afternoon, and I shall make a report to him."

"All the same," persisted Julian, "we--or rather I--was without a doubt
a witness to an act of treason. By some subtle means connected with what
seemed to be a piece of gas pipe, I have seen communication with the
enemy established."

"You don't know that it was the enemy at all," Furley grunted.

"For us others," Julian replied, "there exists the post office, the
telegraph office and the telephone. I d