ld see the
other wing which led inward from the road at something like a right
angle, but was presently lost to sight because of a sparse and unkempt
patch of young trees and shrubs, well-nigh choked with undergrowth,
which extended for some distance from the park wall backward along the
road-side toward Vanves. Whoever owned that stretch of land had
seemingly not thought it worth while to cultivate it or to build upon it
or even to clear it off.

Ste. Marie's first thought, as his eye scanned the two long stretches of
wall and looked over their tops to the trees of the park and the far-off
gables and chimneys of the house, was to wonder where the entrance to
the place could be, and he decided that it must be on the side opposite
to the Clamart tram-line. He did not know the smaller roads hereabouts,
but he guessed that there must be one somewhere beyond, between the
route de Clamart and Fort d'Issy, and he was right. There is a little
road between the two; it sweeps round in a long curve and ends near the
tiny public garden in Issy, and it is called the rue Barbes.

His second thought was that this unkempt patch of tree and brush offered
excellent cover for any one who might wish to pass an observant hour
alongside that high stone wall; for any one who might desire to cast a
glance over the lie of the land, to see at closer range that house of
which so little could be seen from the route de Clamart, to look over
the wall's coping into park and garden.

The thought brought him to his feet with a leaping heart, and before he
realized that he had moved he found himself in the road beside the
halted tram. The conductor brushed past him, mounting to his place, and
from the platform beckoned, crying out:

"En voiture, Monsieur! En voiture!"

Again something within Ste. Marie that was not his conscious direction
acted for him, and he shook his head. The conductor gave two little
blasts upon his horn, the tram wheezed and moved forward. In a moment it
was on its way, swinging along at full speed toward the curve in the
line that bore to the left and dipped under the railway bridge. Ste.
Marie stood in the middle of that empty road, staring after it until it
had disappeared from view.

* * * * *

XIV

THE WALLS OF AEA

Ste. Marie had acted upon an impulse of which he was scarcely conscious
at all, and when he found himself standing alone in the road and
watching the Clamart tra