car leap forward underneath him. Now
it was going fast, now faster, now it rocked and swayed as it gathered
speed. He felt it sweeping down hill and up hill, and once he heard a
hollow rumble as it crossed a wooden bridge.

He could not detect from his hiding place in what direction they were
going, but he gathered they had switched off to the left and were making
for one of the wildest parts of the moor. Never once did he feel the car
slacken its pace, until, with a grind of brakes, it stopped suddenly.

"Get out," said a voice.

John Lexman threw off the cover and leapt out and as he did so the car
turned and sped back the way it had come.

For a moment he thought he was alone, and looked around. Far away in
the distance he saw the grey bulk of Princetown Gaol. It was an accident
that he should see it, but it so happened that a ray of the sun fell
athwart it and threw it into relief.

He was alone on the moors! Where could he go?

He turned at the sound of a voice.

He was standing on the slope of a small tor. At the foot there was a
smooth stretch of green sward. It was on this stretch that the people of
Dartmoor held their pony races in the summer months. There was no sign
of horses; but only a great bat-like machine with out-stretched pinions
of taut white canvas, and by that machine a man clad from head to foot
in brown overalls.

John stumbled down the slope. As he neared the machine he stopped and
gasped.

"Kara," he said, and the brown man smiled.

"But, I do not understand. What are you going to do!" asked Lexman, when
he had recovered from his surprise.

"I am going to take you to a place of safety," said the other.

"I have no reason to be grateful to you, as yet, Kara," breathed Lexman.
"A word from you could have saved me."

"I could not lie, my dear Lexman. And honestly, I had forgotten the
existence of the letter; if that is what you are referring to, but I am
trying to do what I can for you and for your wife."

"My wife!"

"She is waiting for you," said the other.

He turned his head, listening.

Across the moor came the dull sullen boom of a gun.

"You haven't time for argument. They discovered your escape," he said.
"Get in."

John clambered up into the frail body of the machine and Kara followed.

"This is a self-starter," he said, "one of the newest models of
monoplanes."

He clicked over a lever and with a roar the big three-bladed tractor
screw spun.

The aeroplane m