circle, "I don't understand what Mumford's pump is
doing on the wrong side of the road."

"Don't be a ninny, Charlotte! Of course, it's not on the wrong side of
the road."

"But you said it was." (Pause.) "You really did say so, Elizabeth, for
I remember it distinctly." (Another pause, and a sigh.) "For my part, I
never pretended to have what they call the bump of locality."

The poor lady prattled on, more and more querulously, and to the
increasing exasperation of Miss Gabriel, who on the whole believed that
they were making for home, yet could not shake off a haunting suspicion
that they were moving in a direction precisely opposite. Moreover, the
behaviour of Mumford's pump troubled her more than she cared to
confess, even to herself. It stood on the right of the road as you went
towards St. Hugh's; but they had encountered it upon the left.
Therefore, either they had been walking off the road, though in the
right direction, or--terrible thought!--somewhere or somehow they had
turned right about-face, and were walking away from St. Hugh's....

As a matter of fact, they were bending away from the road in a line
which would lead them past the rear of their own back gardens. Their
feet no longer trod the causeway. They were on turf, and, so far as
they could feel it in the darkness, the turf seemed to be mounting in a
fairly stiff slope. Miss Gabriel stooped to feel the grass with the
palm of her hand, and just at that moment her ears caught the faint
note of a bell, some way ahead.

She stood erect, with a little cry of dismay.

"That settles it. We have turned round!"

"Why, what makes you think so?"

"Listen to that bell! Can't you hear it?"

"Of course, I hear it?" Mrs. Pope apparently was nettled by the
question. "But I don't see----"

"The church bell--we are walking straight towards Old Town."

"It don't sound to me like the church bell."

"That's because of the fog. Nothing sounds natural in a fog.... The
Vicar is having it rung to alarm the people in Old Town. I heard him
say this very night that it used to be the custom when a wreck went
ashore.... Besides, what other bell could it be? There is no other
bell."

Mrs. Pope was silent, though unconvinced. She did not suggest the
garrison bell, for even to her scattered intelligence it was a thing
incredible that they should at this moment be rounding the slope of
Garrison Hill, at the back of St. Hugh's.

"Anything might happen in a fog like t