vous
in those days as a woman), the Oriental traveller stepped out on to
the platform.

Having reclosed the door, he turned and leaned in through the open
window.

"Evidently you are not concerned, Mr. Cavanagh," he said. "Be
warned. Do not interfere with those that are!"

The night swallowed him up.

My fears had been justified; the man was one of the Hashishin--a
spy of Hassan of Aleppo! What did it mean?

I craned from the window, searching the platform right and left.
But there was no sign of him.

When the train left Northampton I found myself alone, and I should
only weary you were I to attempt to recount the troubled conjectures
that bore me company to Birmingham.

The train reached New Street at nine, with the result that having
gulped a badly needed brandy and soda in the buffet, I grabbed my
bag, raced across--and just missed the connection! More than an
hour later I found myself standing at ten minutes to eleven upon
the H-- platform, watching the red taillight of the "local"
disappear into the night. Then I realized to the full that with
four miles of lonely England before me there hung above my head a
mysterious threat--a vague menace. The solitary official, who
but waited my departure to lock up the station, was the last
representative of civilization I could hope to encounter until the
gates of "Uplands" should be opened to me!

What was the matter with which I was warned not to interfere? Might
I not, by my mere presence in that place, unwittingly be interfering
now?

With the station-master's directions humming like a refrain in my
ears, I passed through the sleeping village and out on to the road.
The moon was exceptionally bright and unobscured, although a dense
bank of cloud crept slowly from the west, and before me the path
stretched as an unbroken thread of silvery white twining a sinuous
way up the bracken-covered slope, to where, sharply defined against
the moonlight sky, a coppice in grotesque silhouette marked the
summit.

The month had been dry and tropically hot, and my footsteps rang
crisply upon the hard ground. There is nothing more deceptive
than a straight road up a hill; and half an hour's steady tramping
but saw me approaching the trees.

I had so far resolutely endeavoured to keep my mind away from the
idea of surveillance. Now, as I paused to light my pipe--a
never-failing friend in loneliness--I perceived something move in
the shadows of a neighbouring bus