very little. She was lost in perplexities I could not fathom, and presently she slipped away from us and went upstairs.

6

I was, of course, too footsore to walk back to Clayton, but I had a shilling and a penny in my pocket for the train between Checkshill and Two-Mile Stone, and that much of the distance I proposed to do in the train. And when I got ready to go, Nettie amazed me by waking up to the most remarkable solicitude for me. I must, she said, go by the road. It was altogether too dark for the short way to the lodge gates.

I pointed out that it was moonlight. "With the comet thrown in," said old Stuart.

"No," she insisted, "you must go by the road."

I still disputed.

She was standing near me. "To please me," she urged, in a quick undertone, and with a persuasive look that puzzled me. Even in the moment I asked myself why should this please her.

I might have agreed had she not followed that up with, "The hollies by the shrubbery are as dark as pitch. And there's the deer-hounds."