rsized, some three feet six
inches by the look of her,[4] and yet perfectly proportioned. She was
most curiously dressed in a frock cut to the knee, and actually in
nothing else at all. It left her bare-legged and bare-armed, and was
made, as he puts it himself, of stuff like cobweb: "those dusty,
drooping kind which you put on your finger to stop bleeding." He could
not recognise the web, but was sure that it was neither linen nor
cotton. It seemed to stick to her body wherever it touched a prominent
part: "you could see very well, to say nothing of feeling, that she
was well made and well nourished." She ought, as he judged, to be a
child of five years old, "and a feather-weight at that"; but he felt
certain that she must be "much more like sixteen." It was that, I
gather, which made him suspect her of being something outside
experience. So far, then, it was safe to call her a foreigner: but he
was not yet at the end of his discoveries.

[Footnote 4: Her exact measurements are stated to have been as
follows: height from crown to sole, 3 feet 5 inches. Round waist, 15
inches; round bust, 21 inches; round wrist, 3-1/2 inches; round neck,
7-1/2 inches.]

Heavy footsteps, coming from the direction of Wishford, in due time
proved to be those of Police Constable Gulliver, a neighbour of
Beckwith's and guardian of the peace in his own village. He lifted his
lantern to flash it into the traveller's eyes, and dropped it again
with a pleasant "good evening."

He added that it was inclined to be showery, which was more than
true, as it was at the moment raining hard. With that, it seems, he
would have passed on.

But Beckwith, whether smitten by self-consciousness of having been
seen with a young woman in his arms at a suspicious hour of the night
by the village policeman, or bursting perhaps with the importance of
his affair, detained Gulliver. "Just look at this," he said boldly.
"Here's a pretty thing to have found on a lonely road. Foul play
somewhere, I'm afraid," he then exhibited his burden to the lantern
light.

To his extreme surprise, however, the constable, after exploring the
beam of light and all that it contained for some time in silence,
reached out his hand for the knife which Beckwith still held open. He
looked at it on both sides, examined the handle and gave it back.
"Foul play, Mr. Beckwith?" he said laughing. "Bless you, they use
bigger tools than that. That's just a toy, the like of that. Cut your
h