he envelope and read it greedily.

"Dear Friend," she wrote, "I cannot imagine what you must think of my
silence; but whatsoever you do think cannot be half so terrible as the
actual cause of it. I have been in close touch with misery and death,
with things so appalling that heart and mind have had room to hold
nothing else. Indeed, I am still so horribly nervous and upset that I
scarcely know how to think coherently much less write. I can only
remember that you once said that if ever I needed your help I was to
ask; and oh, Mr. Cleek, I need it very very much indeed now. Not for
myself--let me find time to add that--but for a dear, dear friend--the
friend I have so often written about: Captain Morford--who is involved
in an affair of the most distressing and mysterious character and whose
only hope lies, I feel, in you. Will you come to the rescue, for my
sake? That is what I am asking. Let me say, however, that there is no
possibility of a reward, for the captain is in no position to offer one;
but I seem to feel that that will not weigh with you. Neither can I ask
you to call at the house, for, as I have already told you, Lady Chepstow
does not care for the Captain and under those circumstances it would be
embarrassing to ask him there to meet you. So then, if no other case
intervenes, and you really _can_ grant me this great favour, will you be
in the neighbourhood of the lich-gate of Lyntonhurst Old Church at nine
o'clock in the morning of Thursday, you will win the everlasting
gratitude of, Your sincere friend--AILSA LORNE."

Would he be there? He laughed aloud as he put the question to himself. A
Bradshaw was on his table. He caught it up, found that there was a train
that could be caught in thirty-five minutes' time, and clapped on his
hat and--caught it.

That night he slept at the inn of the Three Desires--which, as you may
possibly know, lies but a gunshot beyond the boundary wall of the glebe
of Lyntonhurst Old Church--slept with an alarm clock at his head and
every servant at the inn from the boots to the barmaid tipped a shilling
to see that he did not oversleep himself.

He was up before any of them, however--up and out into the pearl-dusk of
the morning before ever the alarm-clock shrilled its first note, or the
sun's sheen slid lower than the spurs of the weather-cock on the spire
of Lyntonhurst Old Church--and twice he had walked past the big gates
and looked up the still avenue to the windows of th