ly thanked her.

He slid in between them, glanced a moment up at Rhea's great bronze
figure etched out against the moonlit sky and taking on a supernatural
lifelikeness which was eery beyond words, and then darted up the
driveway, groping his way in the shadows toward the great house which of
a sudden seemed to be blazing with light from every window, as though
the soul of it had suddenly been awakened out of its sleep and it had
come to life in one huge simultaneous effort.

Under the tread of his light feet the gravel barely moved, and having
got his bearings that same afternoon, he pelted up in the darkness
toward the front door, stopped suddenly, listened, darted leftward
toward the lawns, and came--_phut!_--up against somebody who was running
in the opposite direction, swift-breathing like a man pursued, and who,
having met the impact of Cleek's tautened body, stationed there for just
such a purpose, bounded back again and gave out an involuntary gasp of
astonishment and ill-concealed irritation.

"Whew! I beg your pardon, I'm sure," said this stranger, as Cleek
flashed on his lamp and sent its rays travelling up the man's slim
figure from top to toe. "Who the--why the--what the----?"

"Awfully sorry, I'm sure," responded Cleek, with a light laugh, in his
best blithering-idiot manner, "but I happened to be strollin' up in this
direction to pay a call upon Miss Maud Duggan, and fell into you. So
beastly dark in these parts, doncherknow. After London, a chap is likely
to lose his bearin's. Exceedin'ly sorry and all that."

The man stopped suddenly and, bending forward, peered up under Cleek's
tweed cap into the face beneath it. Cleek saw him as a slim, handsome
fellow of the leisure classes, lithe of limb and athletic of body, and
in that small ray of torch-light, augmented by the moon's pale gleams,
liked the look of him, though he was startled by the meeting--that was
obvious--and a little shaken as well.

"Eh? What's that? Miss Duggan, did you say? Then what's your name, may I
ask? You're a stranger to these parts, I suppose?"

"Yes. Up for the salmon-fishin', doncherknow. Strollin' back to the
Castle, are you? We'll go together. My name's Deland--Arthur Deland. Am
I permitted to know yours?"

"Certainly. But I'm not--going to the Castle to-night. I've--I've
just--come from there, you see, and was on my way home again when we
cannoned into each other. My name's Macdonald, Angus Fletcher Macdonald.
I'm a--