." Once more he turned on his light, to look at his watch.
"Can't stop now, or I shall miss the train, and I don't want to have to
get a bed at Sprotsfield. A strayed reveler on Christmas night might be
too well remembered. Got an address?"

"Care of Mrs. Willnough, Laundress, Inkston."

"Right. Good-night." With a quick turn he was off along the road to
Sprotsfield. The Sergeant saw the gleam of his torch once or twice,
receding at quite a surprising pace into the distance. Feeling the wad of
notes in his pocket--perhaps to make sure that the whole episode had not
been a dream--the Sergeant turned back towards Inkston.

After a couple of minutes, a tall figure emerged from the shelter of a
high and thick gorse bush just opposite Tower Cottage, on the other side
of the road. Captain Alec Naylor had seen the light of the stranger's
torch, and, after four years in France, he was well skilled in the art of
noiseless approach. But he felt that, for the moment at least, his brain
was less agile than his feet. He had been suddenly wrenched out of one
set of thoughts into another profoundly different. It was his shadow,
together with Cynthia Walford's, that the Sergeant and the stranger had
seen on Doctor Mary's blind. After "walking her home," he had--well, just
not proposed to Cynthia, restrained more by those scruples of his than by
any ungraciousness on the part of the lady. Even his modesty could not
blind him to this fact. He was full of pity, of love, of a man's joyous
sense of triumph, half wishing that he had made his proposal, half glad
that he had not, just because it, and its radiant promise, could still be
dangled in the bright vision of the future. He was in the seventh heaven
of romance, and his heaven was higher than that which most men reach; it
was built on loftier foundations.

Then came the flash of the torch; the high spirits born of one experience
sought an outlet in another. "By Jove, I'll track 'em--like old times!"
he murmured, with a low light laugh. And, just for fun, he did it, taking
to the heath beside the road, twisting his long body in and out amongst
gorse, heather, and bracken, very noiselessly, with wonderful dexterity.
The light of the lamp was continuous now; the stranger was making his
examination. By it Captain Alec guided his steps; and he arrived behind
the tall gorse bush opposite Tower Cottage just in time to hear the
Sergeant say "Mrs. Willnough, Laundress, Inkston," and to witness