les
on the rise.

Colwyn and Queensmead searched the wood and the matted undergrowth as
they progressed, closely scrutinising the ferny hollows, looking up into
the trees, examining the thickets and clumps of shrubs. They had reached
the centre of the wood, and were picking their way through a rank growth
of nettles which covered the decayed bracken, when Colwyn experienced a
mental perception as tangible as a cold hand placed upon the brow of a
sleeper. He had the swift feeling that there was somebody else besides
themselves in the solitude of the wood--somebody who was watching them.
He looked around him intently, and his eyes fell upon a screen of
interlaced branches which grew on the other side of the dip they were
traversing. Without any conscious effort on his own part, his eyes
travelled to the thickest part of the obstruction, and encountered
another pair of eyes gazing at him steadily from the depths of the leafy
screen. That gaze held his own for a moment, and then vanished. He
looked again, but the screen was now unbroken, and not the rustle of a
leaf betrayed the person who was concealed within.

Colwyn touched Queensmead's arm.

"There is somebody hiding in those bushes ahead of us," he whispered.

Queensmead's eyes ran swiftly along the clump of bushes ahead, and he
raised his revolver.

"Come out, or I'll fire!" he cried.

His sharp command shattered the heavy silence like the crack of a
firearm. The next moment the figure of a man broke from the twisted
branches and walked down the slope towards them. It was Ronald.

"Put up your hands, Ronald," commanded Queensmead sternly, poising the
revolver at the advancing man. "Put them up, or I'll fire."

"Fire if you like."

The words fell from Ronald's lips wearily, but he did not put up his
hands. His clothes were torn and stained, his face gaunt and lined, and
in his tired eyes was the look of a man who had lived in the solitudes
with no other companion but despair. Queensmead stepped forward and with
a swift gesture snapped the handcuffs on his wrist.

"I arrest you for the murder of Roger Glenthorpe," he said.

"I could have got away from you if I had wanted," said the young man
wearily. "But what was the use? I'm glad it is over."

"I warn you, Ronald, that any statement you now make may be used against
you on your trial," broke in Queensmead harshly.

"My good fellow, I know all about that." The sudden note of
imperiousness in his manner r