is. Rodd
has got a hold over Marnham of a sort that would bring him
somewhere near the gallows. As the price of his silence Marnham
has promised him his daughter. The daughter knows that her
father is in this man's power, though I think she does not know
in what way, and being a good girl--"

"An angel you mean--do call her by her right name, especially in
a place where angels are so much wanted."

"Well, an angel if you like--she has promised on her part to
marry a man she loathes in order to save her parent's bacon."

"Just what I concluded, from what we heard in the row. I wonder
which of that pair is the bigger blackguard. Well, Allan, that
settles it. You and I are on the side of the angel. You will
have to get her out of this scrape and--if she'll have me, I'll
marry her; and if she won't, why it can't be helped. Now that's
a fair division of labour. How are you going to do it? I haven't
an idea, and if I had, I should not presume to interfere with one
so much older and wiser than myself."

"I suppose that by the time you appeared in it, the game of heads
I win and tails you lose had died out of the world," I replied
with an indignant snort. "I think the best thing I can do will
be to take the horse and look for those oxen. Meanwhile you can
settle your business by the light of your native genius, and I
only hope you'll finish it without murder and sudden death."

"I say, old fellow," said Anscombe earnestly, "you don't really
mean to go off and leave me in this hideousness? I haven't
bothered much up to the present because I was sure that you would
find a way out, which would be nothing to a man of your intellect
and experience. I mean it honestly, I do indeed."

"Do you? Well, I can only say that my mind is a perfect blank,
but if you will stop talking I will try to think the matter over.
There's Miss Heda in the garden cutting flowers. I will go to
help her, which will be a very pleasant change."

And I went, leaving him to stare after me jealously.

CHAPTER VII

THE STOEP

When I reached Miss Heda she was collecting half-opened monthly
roses from the hedge, and not quite knowing what to say I made
the appropriate quotation. At least it was appropriate to my
thought, and, from her answer, to hers also.

"Yes," she said, "I am gathering them while I may," and she
sighed and, as I thought, glanced towards the verandah, though of
this I could not be sure because of