corner of the basin.

"There!" he said. "Now you understand. Nothing's happened except that a
furniture van's run off and fallen into the canal owing to the men's
carelessness. We can settle the rest later--I mean about the rent and so
on."

They looked at each other.

Her skirts were nearly dry. Her nose showed no trace of bleeding, but
there was a bluish lump over her left eye. Save that he was hatless, and
that his trousers clung, he was not utterly unpresentable.

They were alone in the silent dawn.

"You'd better go home by Acre Lane, not up Brougham Street," he said.
"I'll come in during the morning."

It was a parting in which more was felt than said.

They went one after the other through the devastated gateway, baptising
the path as they walked. The Town Hall clock struck three as Denry crept
up his mother's stairs. He had seen not a soul.

IV

The exact truth in its details was never known to more than two
inhabitants of Bursley. The one thing clear certainly appeared to be
that Denry, in endeavouring to prevent a runaway pantechnicon from
destroying the town, had travelled with it into the canal. The romantic
trip was accepted as perfectly characteristic of Denry. Around this
island of fact washed a fabulous sea of uninformed gossip, in which
assertion conflicted with assertion, and the names of Denry and Ruth
were continually bumping against each other.

Mr Herbert Calvert glanced queerly and perhaps sardonically at Denry
when Denry called and handed over ten pounds (less commission) which he
said Miss Earp had paid on account.

"Look here," said the little Calvert, his mean little eyes gleaming.
"You must get in the balance at once."

"That's all right," said Denry. "I shall."

"Was she trying to hook it on the q.t.?" Calvert demanded.

"Oh, no!" said Denry. "That was a very funny misunderstanding. The only
explanation I can think of is that that van must have come to the wrong
house."

"Are you engaged to her?" Calvert asked, with amazing effrontery.

Denry paused. "Yes," he said. "Are you?"

Mr Calvert wondered what he meant.

He admitted to himself that the courtship had begun in a manner
surpassingly strange.

CHAPTER IV

WRECKING OF A LIFE

I

In the Five Towns, and perhaps elsewhere, there exists a custom in
virtue of which a couple who have become engaged in the early summer
find themselves by a most curious coincidence at the same seaside
resort, and often in