But however well he might be armed, he was for the time being in
Miss Pett's power--he knew very well that if he tried to slip away Miss
Pett had only to utter one shrill cry to attract attention. And so, much
as he desired the freedom of the moors, he allowed himself to be taken
captive by this gaoler who promised eventual liberty.

Miss Pett waited in the thickness of the trees until the voices at the
foot of the Shawl became faint and far off; she herself knew well enough
that they were not the voices of men who were searching for Mallalieu,
but of country folk who had been into the town and were now returning
home by the lower path in the wood. But it suited her purposes to create
a spirit of impending danger in the Mayor, and so she kept him there,
her hand still on his arm, until the last sound died away. And while she
thus held him, Mallalieu, who had often observed Miss Pett in her
peregrinations through the Market Place, and had been accustomed to
speaking of her as a thread-paper, or as Mother Skin-and-Bones, because
of her phenomenal thinness, wondered how it was that a woman of such
extraordinary attenuation should possess such powerful fingers--her grip
on his wrist was like that of a vice. And somehow, in a fashion for
which he could not account, especially in the disturbed and anxious
state of his mind, he became aware that here in this strange woman was
some mental force which was superior to and was already dominating his
own, and for a moment he was tempted to shake the steel-like fingers off
and make a dash for the moorlands.

But Miss Pett presently moved forward, holding Mallalieu as a nurse
might hold an unwilling child. She led him cautiously through the trees,
which there became thicker, she piloted him carefully down a path, and
into a shrubbery--she drew him through a gap in a hedgerow, and
Mallalieu knew then that they were in the kitchen garden at the rear of
old Kitely's cottage. Quietly and stealthily, moving herself as if her
feet were shod with velvet, Miss Pett made her way with her captive to
the door; Mallalieu heard the rasping of a key in a lock, the lifting of
a latch; then he was gently but firmly pushed into darkness. Behind him
the door closed--a bolt was shot home.

"This way!" whispered Miss Pett. She drew him after her along what he
felt to be a passage, twisted him to the left through another doorway,
and then, for the first time since she had assumed charge of him,
release