r. What they saw brought swift terror
to their guilty souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them was a
regiment of regulars advancing in column of fours, at the "double." An
officer sprang to the front of the car and seated himself beside Ford.

"I'll have to commandeer this," he said. "Run back to Cromer. Don't
crush my men, but go like the devil!"

"We heard firing here," explained the officer at the Coast Guard
station. "The Guard drove them back to the sea. He counted over a dozen.
They made pretty poor practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel
walk looks as though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder,"
exclaimed the officer suddenly, "if you are the three gentlemen who
first gave the alarm to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the
other coast towns. Because, if you are, he wants your names."

Ford considered rapidly. If he gave false names and that fact were
discovered, they would be suspected and investigated, and the worst
might happen. So he replied that his friends and himself probably
were the men to whom the officer referred. He explained they had been
returning from Cromer, where they had gone to play golf, when they had
been held up by the Germans.

"You were lucky to escape," said the officer "And in keeping on to give
warning you were taking chances. If I may say so, we think you behaved
extremely well."

Ford could not answer. His guilty conscience shamed him into silence.
With his siren shrieking and his horn tooting, he was forcing the car
through lanes of armed men. They packed each side of the road. They were
banked behind the hedges. Their camp-fires blazed from every hill-top.

"Your regiment seems to have turned out to a man!" exclaimed Ford
admiringly.

"MY regiment!" snorted the officer. "You've passed through five
regiments already, and there are as many more in the dark places.
They're everywhere!" he cried jubilantly.

"And I thought they were only where you see the camp-fires," exclaimed
Ford.

"That's what the Germans think," said the officer. "It's working like
a clock," he cried happily. "There hasn't been a hitch. As soon as they
got your warning to Colonel Raglan, they came down to the coast like a
wave, on foot, by trains, by motors, and at nine o'clock the Government
took over all the railroads. The county regiments, regulars, yeomanry,
territorials, have been spread along this shore for thirty miles. Down
in London the Guards started to Dover and B