eet invasion. And when you said just now
that you wanted a chance to go to jail--"

"What's your plan?" interrupted Birrell.

"We would start just before dawn--" began Ford.

"We?" demanded Herbert. "Are you in this?"

"Am I in it?" cried Ford indignantly. "It's my own private invasion! I'm
letting you boys in on the ground floor. If I don't go, there won t be
any invasion!"

The two pink-cheeked youths glanced at each other inquiringly and then
nodded.

"We accept your services, sir," said Birrell gravely. "What's your
plan?"

In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other and then
slapped the table with his open palm. His voice shook with righteous
indignation.

"Of all the preposterous, outrageous--Are you mad?" he demanded. "Do you
suppose for one minute I will allow--"

His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back his chair.

"Oh, you go to the devil!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Come on, Ford," he
said. "We'll find some place where uncle can't hear us."

Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the twenty-one
miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven times. Each time this
misfortune befell them one young man scattered tools in the road and
on his knees hammered ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two
occupants of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles
at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time the route
by which they returned was different from the one by which they had set
forth. Sometimes they followed the beaten path down the cliff or, as it
chanced to be, across the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of
the cliff; sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the
lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car the procedure
of each was alike--each produced a pencil and on the face of his "Half
Inch" road map traced strange, fantastic signs.

At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made
numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf links. They had
come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day of sea-bathing and golf; they
were returning after dinner. The head-waiter of the East Cliff
Hotel gave them the information they desired. He was an intelligent
head-waiter, young, and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing.
In a frock coat he might easily have been mistaken for something even
more important than a head-waiter--for a German riding-