that I seemed already to feel the pursuer gaining at every
stride, the muscles of my limbs failing beneath me and refusing to carry
me farther, just as they do in a dream.

But Agnes Anne was serious and determined, and in the end had to have
her way. I can see the reason now. She knew exactly what she meant to
do, which neither Irma nor I did--though of course both of us far
braver.

We got the door open quite silently--for it was the one Irma had used
in her few and brief outgates. Then, shrouded in her school cloak of
grey, and clad, I mean, in but little else, Agnes flitted out as silent
as a shadow along a wall.

But oh, the agony I suffered to think what my father, and still more my
grandmother, would say to me because I had let my sister expose herself
on such an errand. Twenty times I was on the point of sallying forth
after her. Twenty times the sight of the pale face of Irma waiting there
stopped me, and the thought that I was the only protector of the two
poor things in that great house. Also after all Agnes Anne had gone of
her own accord.

All the same I shivered as I kneeled by the window above with the wide
muzzle of "King George" pointing down the path which led from the glade.
Every moment I expected to hear the air rent with a hideous scream, and
"King George" wobbled in my hands as I thought of Agnes Anne lying slain
in the glow-worm shining of that abominable glade, with that across her
white neck for which my conscience and my grandmother would reproach me
as long as I (and she) lived. One thing comforted me during that weary
waiting. The hollow thudding as of axe on wood never ceased for a
moment. So from that I gathered (and was blithe to believe) that the
alarm had not been given, and that wherever Agnes Anne was, she herself
was still undiscovered.

My eyes were so glued to that misty glade that presently I got a great
surprise. "There she is!" cried Irma, looking round the door, and I saw
a figure flit out of the dusk of the copse-covert within two yards of
the postern door. The next moment, without advertisement or the least
fuss, Agnes Anne was within. I heard the sliding of bolts, the hum of
talk, and then the patter of returning feet on the stair.

CHAPTER XI

AGNES ANNE'S EXPERIENCES AS A SPY

"Well, at first I did not think much about anything" (said Agnes Anne),
"except keeping quiet and doing what Duncan did not believe I could do.
But I knew the wood. It was not so da