this time of the night. But if any Germans' been annoying you,
gentlemen, and you wish to lodge a complaint against them, you give me
your cards--"

"Ye gods!" cried the man in the rear of the car. "Go on!" he commanded.

As the car sped out of Stiffkey, Herbert exclaimed with disgust:

"What's the use!" he protested. "You couldn't wake these people with
dynamite! I vote we chuck it and go home."

"They little know of England who only Stiffkey know," chanted the
chauffeur reprovingly. "Why, we haven't begun yet. Wait till we meet a
live wire!"

Two miles farther along the road to Cromer, young Bradshaw, the
job-master's son at Blakeney, was leading his bicycle up the hill. Ahead
of him something heavy flopped from the bank into the road--and in the
light of his acetylene lamp he saw a soldier. The soldier dodged across
the road and scrambled through the hedge on the bank opposite. He was
followed by another soldier, and then by a third. The last man halted.

"Put out that light," he commanded. "Go to your home and tell no one
what you have seen. If you attempt to give an alarm you will be shot.
Our sentries are placed every fifty yards along this road."

The soldier disappeared from in front of the ray of light and followed
his comrades, and an instant later young Bradshaw heard them sliding
over the cliff's edge and the pebbles clattering to the beach below.
Young Bradshaw stood quite still. In his heart was much fear--fear of
laughter, of ridicule, of failure. But of no other kind of fear. Softly,
silently he turned his bicycle so that it faced down the long hill he
had just climbed. Then he snapped off the light. He had been reliably
informed that in ambush at every fifty yards along the road to Blakeney,
sentries were waiting to fire on him. And he proposed to run the
gauntlet. He saw that it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer
and later as a Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall, practiced
on the rifle range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six inches of mud.
As he threw his leg across his bicycle, Herbert, from the motor-car
farther up the hill, fired two shots over his head. These, he explained
to Ford, were intended to give "verisimilitude to an otherwise bald
and unconvincing narrative." And the sighing of the bullets gave young
Bradshaw exactly what he wanted--the assurance that he was not the
victim of a practical joke. He threw his weight forward and, lifting his
feet, coasted downh