tching
them."

For almost five minutes there was no other word spoken, but the breathing
of each man could be heard.

Then Latimer's voice broke the stillness, lower and more monotonous.

"I had but one resolve. It was to save her and to save my mother. All the
soul of our home and love was bound up in the child. Among the desperate
plans I had made in the long nights of lying awake there had been one
stranger than the rest. I had heard constantly of Americans encountering
each other by chance when they went abroad. When one has a secret to keep
one is afraid of every chance, however remote. Perhaps my plan was mad,
but it accomplished what I wanted. Years before I had travelled through
the mountain districts of North Carolina. One day, in riding through the
country roads, I had realised their strange remoteness from the world,
and the fancy had crossed my mind that a criminal who dressed and lived
as the rudely scattered population did, and who chose a lonely spot in
the woods, might be safer there than with the ocean rolling between him
and his secret. I spent hours in telling her the part she was to play. It
was to be supposed that we had gone upon the journey originally planned.
We were to be hidden--apparently man and wife--in some log cabin off the
road until all was over. I studied the details as a detective studies his
case. I am not a brilliant man, and it was intricate work; but I was
desperate. I read guide-books and wrote letters from different points,
and arranged that they should be sent to our mother at certain dates for
the next few months.

"My stronghold was that she was quite ignorant of travel and would think
of nothing but that the letters came from me and were about Margery. I
made Margery write two or three. Then I knew I could explain that she was
not strong enough to write herself. I was afraid she might break down
before we could leave home; but she did not. I got her away. By
roundabout ways we travelled to the North Carolina mountains. We found a
deserted cabin in the woods, some distance from the road. We dressed
ourselves in the rough homespun of the country. She went barefooted, as
most of the women did. We so secluded ourselves that it was some time
before it was known that our cabin was inhabited. The women have a habit
of wearing deep sunbonnets when about their work. Margery always wore one
and kept within doors. We were thought to be only an unsociable married
pair. Only once she