gate. For the minute it took for
them to pass her we saw more plainly the figures of the men going
heavily beneath their burden.

"_What_ is it?" I found myself asking again, expecting no answer,
needing none.

Very softly Julia pushed up the sash of the window, hung her head with
its loose flowing hair into the night.

Presently, the form of Mrs Ragg came slowly back again, down the garden
path. The lantern hung at her side now; its light streaming upward
showed us her white and frightened face. Julia drew in her head, gently
closed the window, turned to me.

"They have driven off--for the present," she said. "I heard the wheels.
Before they return--perhaps--we shall have time to escape."

We had risen to our feet now, but we clung together still. "Julia, what
_was_ it?" I asked, for the third time, quite senselessly. For my eyes
are as good as Julia's, and our opportunities of sight and judgment had
been the same.

"It was a coffin," Julia said, and I knew that through the darkness her
eyes glared with hardly maintained courage upon my face, and that she
shut down her lips firmly over chattering teeth.

Space fails to tell of the remainder of that night: of how we dressed
in feverish haste to escape, and then were afraid to go; of how, having
assured ourselves--by the sense of hearing only, for we thought it best
not to light a candle--of Mrs Ragg's return, and of her retirement for
the second time to bed, and this time to slumber--we depended on our
hearing also for the establishment of the latter fact--we sat and
watched, shivering with cold and apprehension, through the endless
hours for the reappearance of Mrs Ragg's accomplices, straining our
eyes to stare in the direction of the garden path down which we
believed they would come. Of how with the first faint light of dawn
courage came to us to escape.

* * * * *

Julia remembered the name of the hotel at which our chance acquaintance
of the reading-room had mentioned he was staying. As we did not know
his name, it was by good luck that we encountered him on the steps of
the Royal George setting forth on his before-breakfast constitutional.
He showed himself politely sceptical of our story. How Julia's eyes
blazed upon him in surprised and angry reproach for his want of faith,
he has assured her many times since, he can never forget. We insisted
that he should go at once to the police station and fetch constable