turning her head.

"I can't come till the 5.40," she said.

"But, my dear Barbara----"

"I--_can't_, father."

("Bullies the life out of every one, I've always heard," Eric repeated
to himself, as Lord Crawleigh subsided into inarticulate blustering.
"Except the girl. And she bullies him.")

"I did wonderful staff-work with Waterloo this morning," Barbara
confided. "The 5.40 stops at Winchester _and_ Crawleigh."

"I could have told you that," said Eric. "So could Bradshaw, deceased."

"But fancy looking at Bradshaw, when you can persuade some one to look
at it for you! . . . And you can't get _any_where in Bradshaw without
going through the Severn Tunnel and waiting two hours at Bletchley.
Besides, Waterloo rather loved me. Just my voice, you know. . . . We'll
go down together. You can wire to your people."

"I told them I'd come by the 5.40."

"But how lucky!"

"How--understanding," he amended.

* * * * *

"_If you can be sure of your opponent, you may win by throwing down
your weapon. It is the victory of the weak over the strong, the
'tyranny of tears.' Or perhaps it is the victory of the weak over
the weaker. But you must be sure of your opponent._"--From the Diary
of Eric Lane.

CHAPTER THREE

LASHMAR MILL-HOUSE

"I've come back . . . and I was the King of Kafiristan . . . and
you've been setting here ever since--O Lord!"
RUDYARD KIPLING: "THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING."

1

As the crow flies, Lashmar Mill-House is but five miles from Winchester.
By road, however, there are six miles of tolerable grey flint and rusty
gravel on the Winchester and Melton turnpike, followed by three Irish
miles of unaided forest track. Half of it lies under water for six
months of the year; but in the summer a rutted ride projects from stony
sand-pockets framed in velvet moss, with tidal-waves of bracken surging
up from the dells at the road-side and low branches meeting to net the
sun-shine.

At the end of the three miles Swanley Forest seems to have paused for
breath. There is a natural clearing a mile long and three quarters of a
mile broad--cherished common-land, where the Lashmar villagers walk many
assertive miles of a Sunday to preserve their rights of way; where, too,
tethered goats and errant geese make good their eleventh-century claim
to free pasturage. At one end of the down-soft clearing, a Methodist
chapel, two shops and f