said the stranger.

"Yes, I s'pose it is. But look to be ready to douse your glim. Boomery's a nailer at turning up unexpected." The Sergeant seemed rather nervous.

Mr. Bennett was not. He took out his torch, and guided by its light (which, however, he took care not to throw towards the cottage windows) he advanced to the garden gate, the Sergeant following, and took a survey of the premises. It was remarkable that, as the light of the torch beamed out, the faint sound of footfalls on the road behind died away.

"Keep an eye on the windows, and touch my elbow if any light shows. Don't speak." The stranger was at business--his business--now, and his voice became correspondingly businesslike. "We won't risk going inside the gate. I can see from here." Indeed he very well could; Tower Cottage stood back no more than twelve or fifteen feet from the road, and the torch was powerful.

For four or five minutes the stranger made his examination. Then he turned off his torch. "Looks easy," he remarked, "but of course there's the garrison." Once more he turned on his light, to look at his watch.

"Can't stop now, or I shall miss the train, and I don't want to have to get a bed at Sprotsfield. A strayed reveler on Christmas night might be too well remembered. Got an address?"

"Care of Mrs. Willnough, Laundress, Inkston."

"Right. Good-night." With a quick turn he was off along the road to Sprotsfield. The Sergeant saw the gleam of his torch once or twice, receding at quite a surprising pace into the distance. Feeling the wad of notes in his pocket--perhaps to make sure that the whole episode had not been a dream--the Sergeant turned back towards Inkston.

After a couple of minutes, a tall figure emerged from the shelter of a high and thick gorse bush just opposite Tower Cottage, on the other side of the road. Captain Alec Naylor had seen the light of the stranger's torch, and, after four years in France, he was well skilled in the art of noiseless approach. But he felt that, for the moment at least, his brain was less agile than his feet. He had been suddenly wrenched out of one set of thoughts into another profoundly different. It was his shadow, together with Cynthia Walford's, that the Sergeant and the stranger had seen on Doctor Mary's blind. After "walking her home," he had--well, just not proposed to Cynthia, restrained more by those scruples of his than by any ungraciousness on the part of the lady. Even his modesty could not blind him to this fact. He was full of pity, of love, of a man's joyous sense of triumph, half wishing that he had made his proposal, half glad that he had not, just because it, and its radiant promise, could still be dangled in the bright vision of the future. He was in the seventh heaven of romance, and his heaven was higher than that which most men reach; it was built on loftier foundations.

Then came the flash of the torch; the high spirits born of one experience sought an outlet in another. "By Jove, I'll track 'em--like old times!"

he murmured, with a low light laugh. And, just for fun, he did it, taking to the heath beside the road, twisting his long body in and out amongst gorse, heather, and bracken, very noiselessly, with wonderful dexterity.

The light of the lamp was continuous now; the stranger was making his examination. By it Captain Alec guided his steps; and he arrived behind the tall gorse bush opposite Tower Cottage just in time to hear the Sergeant say "Mrs. Willnough, Laundress, Inkston," and to witness the parting of the two companions.

There was very little to go upon there. Why should not one friend give another an address? But the examination? Beaumaroy should surely know of that? It might be nothing, but, on the other hand, it might have a meaning. But the men had gone, had obviously parted for the night.

Beaumaroy could be told to-morrow; now he himself could go back to his visions--and so homeward, in happiness, to his bed.

Having reached this sensible conclusion, he was about to turn away from the garden gate which he now stood facing, when he heard the house door softly open and as softly shut. The practice of his profession had given him keen eyes in the dark; he discovered Beaumaroy's tall figure stealing very cautiously down the narrow, flagged path. The next instant the light of another torch flashed out, and this time not in the distance, but full in his own face.

"By G.o.d, you, Naylor!" Beaumaroy exclaimed in a voice which was low but full of surprise. "I--I--well, it's rather late--"

Alec Naylor was suddenly struck with the element of humor in the situation. He had been playing detective; apparently he was now the suspected!

"Give me time and I'll explain all," he said, smiling under the dazzling rays of the torch.

Beaumaroy glanced round at the house for a second, pursed up his lips into one of the odd little contortions which he sometimes allowed himself, and said: "Well, then, old chap, come in and have a drink, and do it. For I'm hanged if I see why you should stand staring into this garden in the middle of the night! With your opportunities I should be better employed on Christmas evening."

"You really want me to come in?" It was now Captain Alec's voice which expressed surprise.

"Why the devil not?" asked Beaumaroy in a tone of frank but friendly impatience.

He turned and led the way into Tower Cottage. Somehow this invitation to enter was the last thing that Captain Alec had expected.

CHAPTER VIII

CAPTAIN ALEC RAISES HIS VOICE

Beaumaroy led the way into the parlor, Captain Alec following. "Well, I thought your old friend didn't care to see strangers," he said, continuing the conversation.

"He was tired and fretful to-night, so I got him to bed, and gave him a soothing draught--one that our friend Dr. Arkroyd sent him. He went off like a lamb, poor old boy. If we don't talk too loud we sha'n't disturb him."

"I can tell you what I have to tell in a few minutes."

"Don't hurry." Beaumaroy was bringing the refreshment he had offered from the sideboard. "I'm feeling lonely to-night, so I--" he smiled--"yielded to the impulse to ask you to come in, Naylor. However, let's have the story by all means."

The surprise--it might almost have been taken for alarm--which he had shown at the first sight of Alec seemed to have given place to a gentle and amiable weariness, which persisted through the recital of the Captain's experiences--how his errand of courtesy, or gallantry, had led to his being on the road across the heath so late at night, and of what he had seen there.

"You copped them properly!" Beaumaroy remarked at the end, with a lazy smile. "One does learn a trick or two in France. You couldn't see their faces, I suppose?"

"No; too dark. I didn't dare show a light, though I had one. Besides, their backs were towards me. One looked tall and thin, the other short and stumpy. But I should never be able to swear to either."

"And they went off in different directions, you say?"

"Yes, the tall one towards Sprotsfield, the short one back towards Inkston."

"Oh, the short stumpy one it was who turned back to Inkston?" Beaumaroy had seated himself on a low three-legged stool, opposite to the big chair where Alec sat, and was smoking his pipe, his hands clasped round his knees. "It doesn't seem to me to come to much, though I'm much obliged to you all the same. The short one's probably a local, the other a stranger, and the local was probably seeing his friend part of the way home, and incidentally showing him one of the sights of the neighborhood.

There are stories about this old den, you know--ancient traditions. It's said to be haunted, and what not."

"Funnily enough, we had the story to-night at dinner, at our house."

"Had you now?" Beaumaroy looked up quickly. "What, all about--"

"Captain Duggle, and the Devil, and the grave, and all that."

"Who told you the story?"

"Old Mr. Penrose. Do you know him? Lives in High Street, near the Irechesters."

"I think I know him by sight. So he entertained you with that old yarn, did he? And that same old yarn probably accounts for the nocturnal examination which you saw going on. It was a little excitement for you, to reward you for your politeness to Miss Walford!"

Alec flushed, but answered frankly: "I needed no reward for that." His feelings got the better of him; he was very full of feelings that night, and wanted to be sympathized with. "Beaumaroy, do you know that girl's story?" Beaumaroy shook his head, and listened to it. Captain Alec ended on his old note: "To think of the scoundrel using the King's uniform like that!"

"Rotten! But, er, don't raise your voice." He pointed to the ceiling, smiling, and went on without further comment on Cynthia's ill-usage. "I suppose you intend to stick to the army, Naylor?"

"Yes, certainly I do."

"I'm discharged. After I came out of hospital they gave me sick leave, and constantly renewed it; and when the armistice came they gave me my discharge. They put it down to my wound, of course, but--well, I gathered the impression that I was considered no great loss." He had finished his pipe, and was now smiling reflectively.

Captain Alec did not smile. Indeed he looked rather pained; he was remembering General Punnit's story: military inefficiency, even military imperfection, was for him no smiling matter. Beaumaroy did not appear to notice his disapproving gravity.

"So I was at a loose end. I had sold up my business in Spain; I was there six or seven years, just as Captain--Captain--? Oh, Cranster, yes!--was in Bogota--when I joined up, and had no particular reason for going back there--and, incidentally, no money to go back with. So I took on this job, which came to me quite accidentally. I went into a Piccadilly bar one evening, and found my old man there, rather excited and declaiming a good deal of rot; seemed to have the war a bit on his brain. They started in to guy him, and I think one or two meant to hustle him, and perhaps take his money off him. I took his part, and there was a bit of a shindy. In the end I saw him home to his lodgings--he had a room in London for the night--and, to cut a long story short, we palled up, and he asked me to come and live with him. So here I am, and with me my Sancho Panza, the worthy ex-Sergeant Hooper. Perhaps I may be forgiven for impliedly comparing myself to Don Quixote, since that gentleman, besides his other characteristics, is generally agreed to have been mad."

"Your Sancho Panza's no beauty," remarked the Captain drily.

"And no saint either. Kicked out of the Service, and done time. That between ourselves."

"Then why the devil do you have the fellow about?"

"Beggars mustn't be choosers. Besides, I've a _penchant_ for failures."