badge that every man in the force knew.

"Cleek?"

"Yes! In the name of the Yard; in the name of the king! get out of the
way! In with you, Dollops! We'll get the brutes yet!"

Then he bent over, threw in the clutch, and discarding all speed laws,
sent the car humming and tearing away.

"Hold tight!" he said through his teeth. "Whatever comes, we've got to
get to Burnt Acre Mill inside of an hour. If you know any prayers,
Dollops, say them."

"The Lord fetch us home in time for supper!" gulped the boy obediently.
"S'help me, guv'ner, the wind's goin' through my teeth like I was a
mouth organ, and I'm hollow enough for a flute!"

IV

It is strange how, in moments of stress and trial, even in times of
tragedy, the most commonplace thoughts will intrude themselves and the
mind separate itself from the immediate events. As Merode put the cold
muzzle of the revolver to Ailsa's temple and she ought, one would have
supposed, to have been deaf and blind to all things but the horror of
her position, one of these strange mental lapses occurred, and her mind,
travelling back over the years to her early schooldays, dwelt on a
punishment task set her by her preceptress--the task of copying three
hundred times the phrase "Discretion is the better part of valour."

As the recollection of that time rose before her mental vision, the
value of the phase itself forced its worth upon her and, huddling back
in the corner of the limousine, she clutched the frightened child to her
and gave implicit obedience to Merode's command to make no effort to
attract attention either by word or deed. And he, fancying that he had
thoroughly cowed her, withdrew the touch of the weapon from her temple,
but held it ready for possible use in the grip of his thin, strong hand.

For a time the limousine kept straight on in its headlong course, then,
of a sudden, it swerved to the left. The gleam of a river--all silver
with moonlight--struck up through a line of trees on one side of the
car, the blank, unbroken dreariness of a stretch of waste land spread
out upon the other, and presently, by the slowing down of the motor,
Ailsa guessed that they were nearing their destination. They reached it
a few moments later, and a peep from the window, as the vehicle stopped,
showed her the outlines of a ruined watermill, ghostly, crumbling,
owl-haunted, looming black against the silver sky.

A crumbled wheel hung, rotten and moss-grown, over a dry water-cou