s bewitched her somehow, and where he's
concerned--" He glanced up the slope and clutched me suddenly by the
shoulder: for Whitmore himself was there, walking alone, and coming
straight towards us. "Talk of the devil--here, hide, boy--duck down,
I tell you, there behind the bushes! No! Through the hedge, then--"

I burst across the hedge and dropped through a mat of brambles,
dragging my rug after me. The fall landed me on all-fours upon the
sunken high road, along which I ran as one demented--stark naked,
too--a small Jack of Bedlam under the broadening eye of day; ran past
Miss Belcher's entrance gate with its sentinel masses of tall
laurels, and had reached the bend of the road opening the low cottage
into view, when a sudden jingling of bells and tramp of horses drove
me aside through a gate on the left, to cower behind a hedge there
while they passed.

Two wagons came rumbling by, each drawn by six horses and covered by
a huge white tilt bearing in great letters the words "Russell and
Co., Falmouth to London." On the front of each a lantern shone pale
against the daylight. At the head of each team rode a wagoner,
mounted on a separate horse and carrying a long whip. Beside the
wagons tramped four soldiers with fixed bayonets, and two followed
behind: they wore the uniform of the North Wilts Regiment.

I knew them well enough by repute--these famous wagons conveying
untold treasure between London and the Falmouth Packets.
They passed, and I crept out into the road again, to stare after
them.

With that, turning my head, I was aware of a girl in the roadway
outside the cottage door. But if she had come out to gaze after the
wagons, she was gazing now at me. It was too late to hide, and
moreover I had come almost to the end of my powers. With a cry for
pity I ran towards her.

CHAPTER XV.

MINDEN COTTAGE.

Stark naked though I was, she did not flinch as I came; only her eyes
seemed to widen upon me in wonder. And for all my desperate hurry I
had time to see, first, that they were graver than other girls' eyes,
and next that they were exceedingly beautiful.

In those days I had small learning (I have little enough, even now),
or I might have fancied her some goddess awaiting me between the
night and the dawn. She stood, tall and erect, in a loose white
wrapper, the collar of which had fallen open and revealed the
bodice-folds of her nightgown--a cloud at the base of her firm
throat. Her