her direction. The gate, the
railways, were gone. She was groping in a clinging pall of fog.

Her torch was worse than useless. It only illuminated swirling
swathes of mist and confused her, so she switched it out. In vain
she looked about her, trying to pick up some landmark to guide
her. There was no light, no tree, no house visible, nothing but
the dank, ghostly mist.

To some temperaments, Nature has no terrors. Barbara, to whose
imagination an empty house at dusk had suggested all kinds of
unimaginable fears, was not in the least frightened by the fog.
She only hoped devoutly that a motor-car or a trap would not come
along behind and run her down for she was obliged to keep to the
road; the hard surface beneath her feet was her only guide.

She smiled over her predicament as she made her way along. She
frequently found herself going off the road, more than once into
patches of water, with the result that in a few minutes her feet
were sopping. Still she forged ahead, with many vain halts to
reconnoitre while the fog, instead of lifting, seemed to thicken
with every step she took.

By this time she knew she was completely lost. Coming from the
station there had been, she remembered, a cross-roads with a
sign-board set up on a grass patch, about a quarter of a mile
from the Mill House. She expected every minute to come upon this
fork; again and again she swerved out to the left from her line
of march groping for the sign-post with her hands but she never
encountered it.

Few sounds came to break in upon the oppressive silence of the
mist. Once or twice Barbara heard a train roaring along in the
distance and, at one of her halts, her ear caught the high rising
note of a motor engine a long way off. Except for these
occasional reminders of the proximity of human beings, she felt
she must be on a desert island instead of less than two score
miles from London.

Her wrist watch showed her that she had walked for an hour when
she heard a dog barking somewhere on the left of the road.
Presently, she saw a blurred patch of radiance apparently on the
ground in front of her. So deceptive are lights seen through a
fog that she was quite taken aback suddenly to come upon a long
low house with a great beam of light streaming out of the door.

The house was approached by a little bridge across a broad ditch.
By the bridge stood a tall, massive post upon which a sign
squeaked softly as it swayed to and fro. The inn was