olate."

"And is there no railway near?"

"After Salon, yes. It runs parallel with the road about two miles to the
north--the railway between Arles and Aix-en-Provence."

"So if we get a breakdown, which I hope we shall not, we are not far
from a railway?" Hugh remarked, as through the night the heavy car tore
along that open desolate road.

As he sat there he thought of Dorise, wondering what had happened--and
of Louise. If he had obeyed his father's wishes and married the latter
all the trouble would have been avoided, he thought. Yet he loved
Dorise--loved her with his whole soul.

And she doubted him.

Poor fellow! Hustled from pillar to post, and compelled to resort to
every ruse in order to avoid arrest for a crime which he did not commit,
yet about which he could not establish his innocence, he very
often despaired. At that moment he felt somehow--how he could not
explain--that he was in a very tight corner. He felt confident after two
hours of reflection that he was being driven over these roads that
night in order that the police should gain time to execute some legal
formality for his arrest.

Why had not the police of Marseilles arrested him? There was some subtle
motive for sending him to Cette.

He had not had time to send a telegram to Mr. Peters in London, or to
Monsieur Gautier, the name by which The Sparrow told him he was known at
his flat in the Rue des Petits Champs, in the centre of Paris. He longed
to be able to communicate with his all-powerful friend, but there had
been no opportunity.

Suddenly the car began to pass through banks of mist, which are usual at
night over the low marshes around the mouths of the Rhone. It was about
half-past two in the morning. They had passed through the long dark
streets of Salon, and were already five or six miles on the broad
straight road which runs across the marshes through St. Martin-de-Crau
into Arles.

Of a sudden Hugh declared that he must have a cigarette, and producing
his case handed one to the driver and took one himself. Then he lit the
man's, and afterwards his own.

"It is cold here on the marshes, monsieur," remarked the driver, his
cigarette between his lips. "This mist, too, is puzzling. But it is
nearly always like this at night. That is why nobody lives about here."

"Is it quite deserted?"

"Yes, except for a few shepherds, and they live up north at the foot of
the hills."

For some ten minutes or so they kept on, but Hugh