ped her, as she
stood groping with both hands into the night.

"What's the matter?"

"It's a wall, I think.... I had almost run against it.... Yes, this
must be the wall of Buttershall's garden."

"Are you sure?"

"Certain. We have been bearing away to the right; people always do in a
fog."

"Then if this really is Buttershall's garden--and I only hope and trust
you are not mistaken--we can bear away from it to the left, on purpose,
and then as likely as not we shall find ourselves going straight,"
reasoned Mrs. Pope, lucidly.

"My dear Charlotte"--Miss Gabriel was within an ace of calling her a
fool--"if this is Buttershall's garden----"

"But a moment ago you were sure of it!"

"And so I am. Very well then; since this is Buttershall's garden, we
have only to hold on by the wall and go forward, and that will take
us----"

But here the wall ended, and the sentence with it.

"Ai-ee!"

"Are you hurt?... I said," asserted Mrs. Pope, desperately, and with
conviction, "that one of us would break a limb before we finished."

"It seems to be--yes, it certainly is--a pump." Miss Gabriel's voice
had begun to shake by this time, but she steadied it. "For the moment
I--I half thought it might be a man."

"I would to heaven it were!" said Mrs. Pope, fervently.

"My dear Charlotte!"

"My dear Elizabeth, I mean it. And, what's more, I wouldn't care who he
was. A pump? What earthly use is a pump? It must be Mumford's then, if
it is a pump."

"It can't be."

"Why not?"

"For the simple reason that Mumford's is on the other side of the
road."

"Then we _are_ on the other side of the road, as I have been
maintaining all along."

"Would you mind walking round it?... Yes, you are right. It is
Mumford's pump, for I have just bruised my wrist against the handle.
Can you find the trough?"

"The astonishing thing to me," announced Mrs. Pope, groping her way
with trepidation, "is that nobody shows a light. I don't like to call
people unfeeling; but really, with folks in distress out at sea, and
the guns firing, I wouldn't have believed such callousness."

They made the circuit of Mumford's pump, and assured themselves--for
what the knowledge was worth--that it really was a pump, and Mumford's.
But this cost them dear, for at the end of the circuit, or rather of a
circuit and a half, they had lost all sense of their compass bearings.

"And after all," Mrs. Pope began afresh, her mind working
sympathetically in a