en. I know the colour of her hair. You know, Daisy,"
turning to another of the girls, "that one from the 'Refuge.'"

"There's so many from the 'Refuge' come in here," said the maddening
girl she had called Daisy.

"Yes, but you know the one. Rather strikingly dressed always. Lots of
scent, makes herself up. Her with the hair. The one we call 'Autumn
Tints.'"

"'Autumn Tints'--oh, yes, I know her----"

"Yes, we know her," chorused the other girls, while I fidgeted,
crumpling Million's baffling wire in my hand. "That's the lady who sent
off the telegram. I couldn't be mistaken."

Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, at my side, interposed.

"Well, now, will you young ladies be so kind as to tell us where she
resides? The 'Refuge'--what'll that be?"

We had, it seemed, still some distance to go. We must take the road that
went so, then turn to the right, then to the left again. Then about a
mile further down we'd see a red brick house in a clump of trees, with a
big garden and green palings on to the road. It had "The Refuge" painted
up on a board nailed to a big oak tree in the garden. We shouldn't be
able to mistake it, said the girls.

"Certainly you won't mistake it if you see any of the 'Refugees' in the
garden when you come up," hazarded the most talkative of the post-office
girls.

"It's a case of 'Once seen, never to be forgotten,' there!"

As we went out of the office I found myself wondering more and more
anxiously what all this might mean. What sort of a place had Million got
herself into the middle of?

"What do you think it all means?" I turned again appealingly to the
young man who was driving me.

He shook his grey-hatted head. His face was rather graver than before.

Mercy! What were we going to find? What did he think? Evidently he
wasn't going to tell me.

Only when we got clear of the straggling outskirts of Lewes he crammed
on speed. Up the gradual hills we flew between the bare shoulders of the
downs where the men and horses working in the fields afar off looked as
small as mechanical toys. The whole country was gaunt and gigantic, and
a little frightening, to me. Perhaps this was because my nerves were
already utterly overstrained and anxious. I could see no beauty in the
wideswept Sussex landscape, with the little obsolete-looking villages
set down here and there, like a child's building of bricks, in the midst
of a huge carpet.

There seemed to me something uncanny and ominous in the tinkling of