ame is up, my friend."

Leicester met the stare, but his jaw and throat worked as though he
were choking. I thought he was trying to answer. If so, the words
refused to come.

Someone knocked at the door.

Mr. Rogers stepped to it quickly. "That you, Jim?"

"Yessir."

"Is Miss Brooks with you?" He held the door a very little ajar--not
wide enough to give sight of us behind him.

"Yessir. A gentleman, too, sir: leastways he talks like one, though
dressed like a private soldier. He won't give his name." Jim's tone
was an aggrieved one.

"Thank you: that's quite right. You may go home to bed, if you wish:
but be ready for a call. I may want you later on."

"Be this all you want of me?" Jim was evidently disappointed.

"I fear so."

"P'rhaps you don't know it, sir, but Hodgson's gone. There was
nobody at the gate when we came by."

"Hodgson has a little job on hand. It will certainly occupy him all
night, but I am afraid you cannot help him. Now don't stay asking
questions, my man, but be off to bed. I'll send word if I want you."

Jim grumbled and withdrew. "Best to get him out of the way,"
Mr. Rogers explained to the Rector. "You and I can take this fellow
back to Plymouth at daybreak." He listened for a moment and
announced, "He's gone. Keep an eye on our friend, please, while I
prepare Isabel for it. My word!"--and he heaved a prodigious sigh--
"I'd give something to be through with the next ten minutes!"

He opened the door and, passing through, closed it as quickly behind
him. He was absent for half an hour perhaps. We could hear the
mutter of his voice in the next room and now and again another
masculine voice interrupting--never Isabel's. The Rector had found a
seat for Miss Belcher beside the bureau. He himself took his stand
beside the chimney and fingered a volume of the registers, making
pretence to read but keeping his eye alert for any movement of
Leicester. No one spoke; until the prisoner, intercepting a glance
from Miss Belcher, broke into a sudden brutal laugh.

"Poor old lady!" he jeered, and his eyes travelled wickedly across
the disordered floor. "Whitmore left a lot behind him, eh?"

She rose and turning her back on him, walked to the window.
There she leaned out, seeming to study the night: but I saw that her
shoulders heaved.

The Rector looked across with a puzzled frown. Leicester laughed
again: and with that, Miss Belcher came back to him, slipped out