back to the house.

All that long blistering afternoon I lay baking on the rooftop. Thirst
was my chief torment. My tongue was like a stick, and to make it worse
I could hear the cool drip of water from the mill-lade. I watched the
course of the little stream as it came in from the moor, and my fancy
followed it to the top of the glen, where it must issue from an icy
fountain fringed with cool ferns and mosses. I would have given a
thousand pounds to plunge my face into that.

I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of moorland. I saw the car
speed away with two occupants, and a man on a hill pony riding east. I
judged they were looking for me, and I wished them joy of their quest.

But I saw something else more interesting. The house stood almost on
the summit of a swell of moorland which crowned a sort of plateau, and
there was no higher point nearer than the big hills six miles off. The
actual summit, as I have mentioned, was a biggish clump of trees--firs
mostly, with a few ashes and beeches. On the dovecot I was almost on a
level with the tree-tops, and could see what lay beyond. The wood was
not solid, but only a ring, and inside was an oval of green turf, for
all the world like a big cricket-field.

I didn't take long to guess what it was. It was an aerodrome, and a
secret one. The place had been most cunningly chosen. For suppose
anyone were watching an aeroplane descending here, he would think it
had gone over the hill beyond the trees. As the place was on the top
of a rise in the midst of a big amphitheatre, any observer from any
direction would conclude it had passed out of view behind the hill.
Only a man very close at hand would realize that the aeroplane had not
gone over but had descended in the midst of the wood. An observer with
a telescope on one of the higher hills might have discovered the truth,
but only herds went there, and herds do not carry spy-glasses. When I
looked from the dovecot I could see far away a blue line which I knew
was the sea, and I grew furious to think that our enemies had this
secret conning-tower to rake our waterways.

Then I reflected that if that aeroplane came back the chances were ten
to one that I would be discovered. So through the afternoon I lay and
prayed for the coming of darkness, and glad I was when the sun went
down over the big western hills and the twilight haze crept over the
moor. The aeroplane was late. The gloaming was far advanced wh