had been travelling down hill all this time, but at this point we
crossed a road and the ground began to rise. I was in that painful
condition which occurs when one has lost one's first wind and has not
yet got one's second. I was hotter than I had ever been in my life.

Whether Aunt Elizabeth, too, was beginning to feel the effects of her
run, or whether she did it out of the pure effrontery of her warped and
unpleasant nature, I do not know; but she now slowed down to walk, and
even began to peck in a tentative manner at the grass. Her behaviour
infuriated me. I felt that I was being treated as a cipher. I vowed
that this bird should realise yet, even if, as seemed probable, I burst
in the process, that it was no light matter to be pursued by J. Garnet,
author of "The Manoeuvres of Arthur," etc., a man of whose work so
capable a judge as the Peebles _Advertiser_ had said "Shows promise."

A judicious increase of pace brought me within a yard or two of my
quarry. But Aunt Elizabeth, apparently distrait, had the situation well
in hand. She darted from me with an amused chuckle, and moved off
rapidly again up the hill.

I followed, but there was that within me that told me I had shot my
bolt. The sun blazed down, concentrating its rays on my back to the
exclusion of the surrounding scenery. It seemed to follow me about like
a limelight.

We had reached level ground. Aunt Elizabeth had again slowed to a walk,
and I was capable of no better pace. Very gradually I closed in. There
was a high boxwood hedge in front of us; and, just as I came close
enough once more to stake my all on a single grab, Aunt Elizabeth, with
another of her sardonic chuckles, dived in head-foremost and struggled
through in the mysterious way in which birds do get through hedges. The
sound of her faint spinster-like snigger came to me as I stood panting,
and roused me like a bugle. The next moment I too had plunged into the
hedge.

I was in the middle of it, very hot, tired, and dirty, when from the
other side I heard a sudden shout of "Mark over! Bird to the right!"
and the next moment I found myself emerging with a black face and
tottering knees on the gravel path of a private garden. Beyond the path
was a croquet lawn, and on this lawn I perceived, as through a glass
darkly, three figures. The mist cleared from my eyes, and I recognised
two of them.

One was the middle-aged Irishman who had travelled down with us in the
train. The other was