nothing in itself, yet damning if the code
should be discovered. As for you, well, you are safe from anything
transpiring in France, and although you seem to have been rather unlucky
there, you appear to be safe as regards Norfolk. You must make up your
mind now to follow my lead. Take a home command, do the rest of your
soldiering quietly, and shout with the others when the day of peace
comes. These last few months must be our great secret. At heart we may
have longed to call ourselves sons of a mightier nation, but fate is
against us. We must continue Englishmen."

"You've taken my breath away," Granet declared. "Let me realise this for
a moment."

He sat quite still. A rush of thoughts had crowded into his brain. First
and foremost was the thought of Geraldine. If he could cover up his
traces! If it were true that he was set free now from his pledges! Then
he remembered his visitor of the evening and his heart sank.

"Look here," he confessed, "in a way this is a huge relief. I, like you,
thought it was to last for three months and I thought I could stick
it. While the excitement of the thing was about it was easy enough, but
listen, uncle. That Norfolk affair--I am not really out of that."

"What do you mean?" Sir Alfred demanded anxiously. "This fellow
Thomson?"

"Thomson, of course," Granet assented, "but the real trouble has come
to me in a different way. I told you that the girl got me out of it.
She couldn't stand the second cross-examination. She was driven into a
corner, and finally, to clear herself, said that we were engaged to be
married. She has come up to London, came to me to-night. She expects me
to marry her."

"How much does she know?" Sir Alfred asked.

"Everything," Granet groaned. "It was she who had told me of the
waterway across the marshes. She saw me there with Collins, just before
the flare was lit. She knew that I lied to them when they found me."

Sir Alfred sighed.

"It's a big price, Ronnie," he said, "but you'll have to pay it. The
sooner you marry the girl and close her mouth, the better."

"If it hadn't been for that damned fellow Thomson," Granet muttered,
"there would never have been a suspicion."

"If it hadn't been for the same very enterprising gentleman," Sir Alfred
observed, "my correspondence would never have been tampered with."

Granet leaned a little forward.

"Thomson is our one remaining danger," he said. "I have had the feeling
since first he half recognis