bered into the middle of it, and reclined
upon the thick boughs. After looking westward for a considerable time,
she blamed herself for not looking eastward to where Stephen was, and
turned round. Ultimately her eyes fell upon the ground.

A peculiarity was observable beneath her. A green field spread itself
on each side of the hedge, one belonging to the glebe, the other being a
part of the land attached to the manor-house adjoining. On the
vicarage side she saw a little footpath, the distinctive and altogether
exceptional feature of which consisted in its being only about ten yards
long; it terminated abruptly at each end.

A footpath, suddenly beginning and suddenly ending, coming from nowhere
and leading nowhere, she had never seen before.

Yes, she had, on second thoughts. She had seen exactly such a path
trodden in the front of barracks by the sentry.

And this recollection explained the origin of the path here. Her father
had trodden it by pacing up and down, as she had once seen him doing.

Sitting on the hedge as she sat now, her eyes commanded a view of both
sides of it. And a few minutes later, Elfride looked over to the manor
side.

Here was another sentry path. It was like the first in length, and
it began and ended exactly opposite the beginning and ending of its
neighbour, but it was thinner, and less distinct.

Two reasons existed for the difference. This one might have been trodden
by a similar weight of tread to the other, exercised a less number of
times; or it might have been walked just as frequently, but by lighter
feet.

Probably a gentleman from Scotland-yard, had he been passing at the
time, might have considered the latter alternative as the more probable.
Elfride thought otherwise, so far as she thought at all. But her own
great To-Morrow was now imminent; all thoughts inspired by casual sights
of the eye were only allowed to exercise themselves in inferior corners
of her brain, previously to being banished altogether.

Elfride was at length compelled to reason practically upon her
undertaking. All her definite perceptions thereon, when the emotion
accompanying them was abstracted, amounted to no more than these:

'Say an hour and three-quarters to ride to St. Launce's.

'Say half an hour at the Falcon to change my dress.

'Say two hours waiting for some train and getting to Plymouth.

'Say an hour to spare before twelve o'clock.

'Total time from leaving Endelstow till twelve