e enquiries.

"It's a bad business, Sir," said the man in charge of the cart, a small
farmer whom Buntingford recognized. "The men in it are just mad--they
don't know what they've done, nor why they've done it. But the soldiers
will be there directly. There's far too few police, and I'm afraid
there's some people hurt. I wouldn't take ladies into the town if I was
you, Sir." He glanced at Helena.

Buntingford nodded, and returned to the car.

"You see that farm-house down there on the right?" he said to Helena as
they started again. "We'll stop there."

They ran down the long slope to the town, the smoke carried towards them
by a westerly wind beginning to beat in their faces,--the roar of the
great bonfire in their ears.

Helena drew up at the entrance of a short lane leading to a farm on the
outskirts of the small country town--the centre of an active
furniture-making industry, for which the material lay handy in the large
beechwoods which covered the districts round it. The people of the farm
were all standing outside the house-door, watching the fire and talking.

"You're going to leave me here?" said Helena wistfully, looking at
Buntingford.

"Please. You've brought us splendidly! I'll send Geoffrey back to you as
soon as possible, with instructions."

She drove the car up to the farm. An elderly man came forward with whom
Buntingford made arrangements. The car was to be locked up. "And you'll
take care of the lady, till I send?"

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"I'll come back to you, as soon as I can," said French to Helena. "Don't
be anxious about us. We shall get into the market-hall by a back way and
find out what's going on. They've probably got the hose on by now.
Nothing like a hose-pipe for this kind of thing! Congratters on a
splendid bit of driving!"

"Hear, hear," said Buntingford.

They went off, and Helena was left alone with the farm people, who made
much of her, and poured into her ears more or less coherent accounts of
the rioting and its causes. A few discontented soldiers, an unpopular
factory manager, and a badly-handled strike:--the tale was a common one
throughout England at the moment, and behind and beneath the surface
events lay the heaving of that "tide in the affairs of men," a tide of
change, of restlessness, of revolt, set in motion by the great war.
Helena paced up and down the orchard slope behind the house, watching the
conflagration which was beginning to die down, startled every n