d they saw reflected the shadows of a man and a girl,
standing side by side. "Mistletoe, eh?" remarked the stranger. The
Sergeant spat on the road; they resumed their way, pursuing the road
across the heath.

It was fine, but overclouded and decidedly dark. Every now and then
Bennett, to call the stranger by what was almost confessedly a
_nom-de-guerre,_ flashed a powerful electric torch on the roadway.
"Don't want to walk into a gorse-bush," he explained with a laugh.

"Put it away, you darned fool! We're nearly there."

The stranger obeyed. In another seven or eight minutes there loomed up,
on the left hand, the dim outline of Mr. Saffron's abode--the square
cottage with the odd round tower annexed.

"There you are!" The Sergeant's voice instinctively kept to a whisper.
"That's what you want to see."

"But I can't see it--not so as to get any clear idea."

No lights showed from the cottage, nor, of course, from the Tower; its
only window had been, as Mr. Penrose said, boarded up. The wind--there
was generally a wind on the heath--stirred the fir-trees and the bushes
into a soft movement and a faint murmur of sound. A very acute and alert
ear might perhaps have caught another sound--footfalls on the road, a
good long way behind them. The two spies, or scouts, did not hear them;
their attention was elsewhere.

"Probably they're both in bed; it's quite safe to make our examination,"
said the stranger.

"Yes, I s'pose it is. But look to be ready to douse your glim. Boomery's
a nailer at turning up unexpected." The Sergeant seemed rather nervous.

Mr. Bennett was not. He took out his torch, and guided by its light
(which, however, he took care not to throw towards the cottage windows)
he advanced to the garden gate, the Sergeant following, and took a survey
of the premises. It was remarkable that, as the light of the torch beamed
out, the faint sound of footfalls on the road behind died away.

"Keep an eye on the windows, and touch my elbow if any light shows. Don't
speak." The stranger was at business--his business--now, and his voice
became correspondingly businesslike. "We won't risk going inside the
gate. I can see from here." Indeed he very well could; Tower Cottage
stood back no more than twelve or fifteen feet from the road, and the
torch was powerful.

For four or five minutes the stranger made his examination. Then he
turned off his torch. "Looks easy," he remarked, "but of course there's
the garrison