cil the next morning
when a most important question of small holdings was to come up for
discussion. Mr. Hazlewood held the strongest views. He was engaged in
shaping them in the smallest possible number of words. To be brief, to be
vivid--there was the whole art of public speaking. Mr. Hazlewood
chattered feverishly for five minutes; he had come in chattering, he went
out chattering.

"That's all right, Stella, you see," said Dick cheerfully when they
were left alone. Stella nodded her head. Mr. Hazlewood had not said one
word in recognition of her engagement but she had made her little fight
that morning. She had yielded and she could not renew it. She had spent
three miserable hours framing reasonable arguments why last night
should be forgotten. But the sight of her lover coming across the
meadow had set her heart so leaping that she could only stammer out a
few tags and phrases.

"Oh, I wish you hadn't come!" she had repeated and repeated and all the
while her blood was leaping in her body for joy that he had. She had
promised in the end to stand firm, to stand by his side and brave--what,
after all, but the clamour of a week? So he put it and so she was eager
to believe.

Mr. Hazelwood, busy though he made himself out to be, found time that
evening to drive in his motor-car into Great Beeding, and when the London
train pulled up at the station he was on the platform. He looked
anxiously at the passengers who descended until he saw Robert Pettifer.
He went up to him at once.

"What in the world are you doing here?" asked the lawyer.

"I came on purpose to catch you, Robert. I want to speak to you in
private. My car is here. If you will get into it with me we can drive
slowly towards your house."

Pettifer's face changed, but he could not refuse. Hazlewood was agitated
and nervous; of his ordinary complacency there was no longer a trace.
Pettifer got into the car and as it moved away from the station he asked:

"Now what's the matter?"

"I have been thinking over what you said last night, Robert. You had a
vague feeling of doubt. Well, I have the verbatim reports of the trial in
Bombay here in this envelope and I want you to read them carefully
through and give me your opinion." He held out the envelope as he spoke,
but Pettifer thrust his hands into his pockets.

"I won't touch it," he declared. "I refuse to mix myself up in the affair
at all. I said more than I meant to last night."

"But you did say