Why, you never met her until that day at the Carlton!"

"She was a complete stranger to me," Dominey asserted.

"Then all I can say is that you have been unusually rapid if you've
managed to create a past in something under three months!" Caroline
pronounced suspiciously. "I call her coming here a most bare-faced
proceeding, especially as this is practically a bachelor establishment."

They had arrived at the next stand, and conversation was temporarily
suspended. A flight of wild duck were put out from a pool in the wood,
and for a few minutes every one was busy. Middleton watched his master
with unabated approval.

"You're most as good as the old Squire with them high duck, Sir
Everard," he said. "That's true very few can touch 'em when they're
coming out nigh to the pheasants. They can't believe in the speed of
'em."

"Do you think Sir Everard shoots as well as he did before he went to
Africa?" Caroline asked.

Middleton touched his hat and turned to Seaman, who was standing in the
background.

"Better, your Grace," he answered, "as I was saying to this gentleman
here, early this morning. He's cooler like and swings more level. I'd
have known his touch on a gun anywhere, though."

There was a glint of admiration in Seaman's eyes. The beaters came
through the wood, and the little party of guns gossiped together while
the game was collected. Terniloff, his usual pallor chased away by
the bracing wind and the pleasure of the sport, was affable and even
loquacious. He had great estates of his own in Saxony and was explaining
to the Duke his manner of shooting them. Middleton glanced at his
horn-rimmed watch.

"There's another hour's good light, sir," he said. "Would you care about
a partridge drive, or should we do through the home copse?"

"If I might make a suggestion," Terniloff observed diffidently, "most
of the pheasants went into that gloomy-looking wood just across the
marshes."

There was a moment's rather curious silence. Dominey had turned and was
looking towards the wood in question, as though fascinated by its almost
sinister-like blackness and density. Middleton had dropped some game he
was carrying and was muttering to himself.

"We call that the Black Wood," Dominey said calmly, "and I am rather
afraid that the pheasants who find their way there claim sanctuary. What
do you think, Middleton?"

The old man turned his head slowly and looked at his master. Somehow
or other, every scrap of c