X

"'Blond loosestrife and red meadow-sweet among,We tracked the shy Thames shore.'"

he quoted.

"It's like a passport," she said—"or finding that you haven't lost your ticket, after all—when people have read the same things and remembered them. But don't you love the bit that begins about 'the tempestuous moon in early June,' and ends up with the 'uncrumpling fern and scent of hay new-mown'? I wonder why it is that when people quote poetry in books you feel that they're Laura-Matilda-ish, and when they do it really you quite like it. Do you write poetry?"

He looked at her guiltily. "Look out to the left," he said; "there's an absolutely perfect thatched barn, and four oast-houses—you know,where they dry the hops, with little fires of oak chips. Have you ever been in an oast-house? We will some day—"

She was silent as the boat slipped past the old farm buildings, the old trees, the long perfection of the barn, and the deep red and green of the mossy oast-house wall going down sheer to the smooth, brown water, and hung at crevice and cranny with little ferns and little flowers—herb-robert and stonecrop. The reflection, till his oars shattered it, was as perfect as the building itself, and she drew a deep breath and turned to look back as the boat slid past.

"You were right," she said, "it is a darling little river. And youdowrite poetry, don't you?"

"Is this the confessional or the Medway?" he asked.

"I know you do," she said. "Of course you do—everybody does, as well as they can, I suppose; I can't, but I do," she added, encouragingly. "We will write poems for each other, on wet nights in the caravan, about Nature and Fate and Destiny, and things like that—won't we?"

The quiet river, wandering by wood and meadow, bordered by its fringe of blossoms and flowering grasses, the smooth backwaters where leaning trees touched hands across the glassy mirror, and water-lilies gleamed white and starry,the dappled shadows, the arch of blue sky, the gay sunshine, and the peace of the summer noon all wrought in one fine spell to banish from their thoughts all fear and dismay, all doubts and hesitations. Here they were, two human beings—young, healthy, happy—with all fair things before them and all sad things behind. It seemed to them both, at that moment, that they need ask nothing more of life than a long chain of days like this. They were silent, and each felt in the other's silence no embarrassment or weariness, but only a serene content. Even Charles, overcome by the spirit of the hour, was silent, slumbering on the matting between them, in heavy abandonment.

The perfection of their surroundings left them free to catch the delicate flavor of the wonderful adventure—a flavor which the dust and hurry of yesterday had disguised and distorted a little.

He looked at her and thought, "It is worth while—it is indeed worth while"—and knew that if only the princess were for his winning the moment of rashness which only yesterday he had almost regretted would be in its result the most fortunate moment of his life.

She looked at him, and a little fear lifted its head and stung her like a snake. What if he were to regret the adventure? What if he were to likeher less and less—she put it to herself like that—while she grew to like him more and more? She looked at his eyes and his hands, and the way the hair grew on brow and nape, and it seemed to her that thus and not otherwise should a man's hair and eyes and hands be.

But they did not look at each other so that their eyes met till the boat rounded the corner to theweir-pool below Stoneham Lock. Then their eyes met, and they smiled, and she said:

"I am very glad to be here."

It seemed to her that she owed him the admission. He took it as she would have wished him to take it.

"I am glad you like my river," he said.

She was very much interested in the opening of the lock gates and deplored the necessity which kept her in the boat, hanging on to the edge of the lock with a boat-hook while he wielded the crowbar. The locks on the Medway are primitive in their construction and heavy to work. There are no winches or wheels or artful mechanical contrivances of weights and levers and cables. There are sluices, and from the sluice-gates posts rise, little iron-bound holes in them, holes in which the urgent nose of the crowbar exactly fits. The boatman leans indolently against the tarred, unshaped tree trunk whose ax-wrought end isthe top of the lock gate; the tree trunk swings back above the close sweet-clover mat that edges the lock; the lock gates close—slow, leisurely, and dignified. Then the boatman stands on the narrow plank hung by chains to each lock gate, and with his crowbar chunks up the sluice, with a pleasant ringing sound of iron on iron, securing the raised sluice with a shining iron pin that hangs by a little chain of its own against the front of the lock gate, like an ornament for a gentleman's fob. If you get your hand under the pin and the sluice happens to sink, you hurt your hand.

Slowly the lock fills with gentle swirls of foam-white water, slowly the water rises, and the boat with it, the long gates unclose to let you out—slow, leisurely, dignified—and your boat sweeps out along the upper tide, smoothly gliding like a boat in a dream.

Thus the two passed through Stoneham Lock and the next and the next, and then came to the Round Lock, which is like a round pond whose water creeps in among the roots of grass and forget-me-not and spearmint and wild strawberry. And so at last to Oak Weir Lock, where the turtledoves call from the willow wood on the island where the big trees are, and the wide, sunny meadows where the sheep browse all day till the shepherd calls them home in the evening—the shepherdwith his dog at his heels and his iron crook, polished with long use and stately as a crozier in a bishop's hand.

They met no one—or almost no one. At East Peckham a single rustic looked at them over the middle arch of the seven-arched bridge built of fine, strong stone in the days of the Fourth Edward, and at Lady White Weir a tramp gave them good day and said it was a good bit yet to Maidstone. He spat in the water, not in insolence, but contemplatively, and Edward gave him a silver token of good will and a generous pinch of dark tobacco, with a friendly, "Here's for luck."

"You're a gentleman," the tramp retorted, grudgingly, and spat again, and slouched off along the green path. These two were all. Not another human face did they see for all the length of their little voyage.

All the long and lovely way it was just these two and the river and the fields and the flowers and the blue sky and youth and summer and the sun.

At Oak Weir they put the boat through the lock, and under the giant trees they unpacked the luncheon-basket they had brought from the Midlothian—how far away and how incredibly out of the picture such a place now seemed!—and sat among the twisted tree roots, and ate and drankand were merry like children on a holiday. It was late when they reached the weir, and by the time the necessity of the return journey urged itself upon them the shadows were growing longer and blacker till they stretched almost across the great meadow. The shepherd had taken the sheep away, passing the two with a nod reserved, but not in its essence unfriendly. Edward had smoked a good many cigarettes, and they had talked a good deal. It was as he had said at their first meeting, they were like two travelers who, meeting, hasten to spread, each before the other, the relics and spoils of many a long and lonely journey.

"I wish we could have stayed here," she said at last. "If we had only had the sense to fold our tents, like the Arabs, and bring them with us, I suppose we could have camped here."

"It isn't only tents," he said; "it's all the elegancies of the toilette—brushes and combs and slippers. You must return to theCaravansarythat guards these treasures. The nine-fifty-five will do us. But we haven't much more than time. There's the boat to pay for and the basket to get to the station. Come, Princess, if we could stay here forever we would, but since we can't we won't stay another minute."

Once in the boat, and in the lock, she leaned back, holding the edge of the lock with the boat-hook,and with the other hand detaining Charles. She looked back dreamily on the day which had been, and she did not pretend that it had not been, the happiest day in her life. To be with one who pleased—he certainly did please—and to whom one's every word and look was so obviously pleasing! It is idle to deny that she felt smoothed, stroked the right way, like a cat who is fortunate in its friends. And now all days were to be like this. The crowbar began its chinking—once, twice—then a jarring sound, and a low but quite distinct "Damn!"

She started out of her dream.

"I beg your pardon," he was saying, "but I've caught my finger, like a fool. I can't do anything. Can you come here?"

"Of course." She stepped out of the boat. The water in the lock had hardly begun to subside. She took the painter and, holding it, went to him, Charles following with cheerful bounds. The sluice had slipped a little and its iron pin held his finger firmly clipped against the tarred wood below.

She did not cry out nor tremble nor do any of the things a silly woman might have done. "Tell me what to do," was all she said.

He told her how to hold the crowbar, how to raise the sluice so that the finger might be released.She did it all exactly and carefully. When the finger was released he wrapped his handkerchief around it.

"Does it hurt?" she said.

And he said, "Yes."

"You must put it in the water," she said. "You can't reach it here. Come into the boat."

He obeyed her. She came and sat by him in the stern—sat there quite silently. No "I'm so sorry!" or "Can't I do anything?" Her hand was on Charles's collar. His eyes were closed. His finger was badly crushed; the blood stained the water, and presently she saw it. She kept her eyes fixed on the spreading splash of red.

"You haven't fainted, have you?" she said at last. "It's getting very dark."

"No," he said, and opened his eyes. She raised hers, and both perceived one reason for the darkness—the boat had sunk nine feet or so. The dark, dripping walls of the lock towered above them. While he had fought his pain and she her sympathy the lock had been slowly emptying itself. They were at the bottom, or almost, and up those smooth walls there was no climbing out.

"Push the boat against the lower gate," he said; and as she obeyed he added, "I must try to climb up somehow. I'll pitch the crowbar up on shore first. Where is it?"

"I left it on the lock gate," she said. "Wasn't that right?"

"It doesn't matter," he told her; but even as he spoke the sluice, which the weight of the water had held in place after the pin had been removed, now, as the waters above and below it grew level with each other, fell into its place with a splash and an echoing boom, and with the shock the crowbar fell from its resting-place on the tarred ledge and disappeared in the water below.

"Lucky it didn't fall on us," he said, and laughed. "It's no use my climbing out now, Princess. I couldn't open the gate, anyhow. We're caught like two poor little rabbits in a trap—or three, if you count Charles—and here we must stay till some one comes along with a crowbar. I dare say there'll be a barge by and by. D'you mind very much?"

"Not a bit," she assured him, cheerfully. "It's all my fault, anyhow, and, besides, I enjoy it. Let me tie your hand up, and then you must smoke till rescue comes."

"Aren't you cold?" he asked, for indeed the air was chill in that watery inclosure.

"Not a bit. I have my cloak," she said, and snuggled into it. "But you'll be cold. Have half—it's a student's cloak, eight yards around."

He accepted the offer, and they sat with thecloak wrapped around them both, with Charles snuggling under the lower folds of it.

"If you hear a footstep or a whistle or anything, shout," he said. "I do wish I hadn't let you in for this. I hate a fool."

"I don't mind a bit, except about your finger. The bone isn't broken, is it?"

"No," he said; "I've just made a fuss about nothing. I hate a fool, as I said before."

She thought of the wet patch on the tarred wood and the red patch in the water, and he felt her shiver.

"It's very decent of you," said she, "not to scold me about leaving the crowbar there."

"A good Medway boatman should never be separated from his crowbar," he said, monitorily.

"I know that now," she said. "I ought to have known before. I hate a fool, too."

OAK WEIR LOCK

"IF it weren't for your finger—" said she.

"My finger is the just reward of idiocy and doesn't deserve any kind thought from you."

"If it weren't for that, I should rather enjoy it," she said. "There's plenty to eat left in the basket. Shall I get it out and let's have supper before it's quite dark? I do really think it's fun. Don't you?"

"That's right," said he, with a show of bitterness, "make the best of it out of pity for the insane idiot who landed you in this fix. Be bright, be womanly, never let me guess that a cold, damp lock and a 'few bits of broken vittles' are not really better than a decent supper and a roof over your head. A fig for the elegancies of civilization and the comforts of home! Go on being tactful. I adore it."

"I meant what I said," she answered, with gentle insistence. "I do rather like it. I'll whineabout my dinner and my looking-glass, if you like, but I'll get the supper first. Isn't it glorious to think that there's no one at home—where the comforts and the elegancies are—no one to be anxious about us because we're late, and scold us when we get home? Liberty," she ended, reflectively, "is a very beautiful thing. I suppose no one is likely to come along this way till the shepherd comes in the morning?"

"We'll hope for better luck," said he. "I say, you'll never trust me to take care of you again after this silly business—"

"I don't know," she said, deliberately, "that I ever asked you to take care of me. Did I? You were to help me—yes, and you have helped me—but I don't think I want to be taken care of, any more than another man would want it. I was in a difficulty and you helped me. If you were in a difficulty and I helped you, you wouldn't expect me to take care of you forever, would you?"

"I don't know," he said. "If you hadn't been extraordinarily sensible I should still be there with my hand in the thumbscrew."

"Did you think," she asked, sweetly, "that all women were inevitably silly?"

Charles raised his head and growled.

"There," said she, "you see, even Charles repudiates the idea."

If this was so, Charles instantly repudiated the idea with more growls and the added violence of barks. She muffled him in the cloak and listened. A footstep on the towing-path.

"Hullo!" she called, and Edward added, "Hi, you there!" and Charles, wriggling forcefully among the folds of the cloak, barked again.

"That ought to fetch them, whoever they are," said Edward, and stood up.

Even as he did so a voice said, urgently and quite close above them. "'Ush, can't yer!" and a head and shoulders leaning over the edge of the lock came as a dark silhouette against the clear dark blue of the starry sky. For it was now as dark as a July night is—and that, as we know, is never really dark at all. '"Ush!" repeated the voice. "Shut up, I tell yer!" and, surprisingly and unmistakably, it was to the two in the boat that he was speaking. "Make that dawg o' yours choke hisself—stow it, can't yer! Yer don't want to be lagged, do yer? Yer aren't got 'arf a chants once any one knows you're 'ere. Don't you know you're wanted? The police'll be along some time in the night, and then you're done for."

"I think," said Edward, with extreme politeness, "that you are, perhaps, mistaking us for acquaintances, whereas we are strangers to you. But if you could be so kind as to open the gatesand lend us a crowbar to get through the other locks you would not be the loser."

"I know yer, right enough," said the man. "Yer ain't no strangers to me. It was me as 'ired yer the boat up at the Anchor. The boss 'e sent me out to look for yer. Only 'e doesn't know I know about your being wanted. Least said soonest mended's what I allus say. Where's yer crow got to?"

"In the water," said Edward; "dropped off the lock gate."

"Clumsy!" said the man, giving the word its full vocative value. "Whereabouts?"

"Just over there," said Edward.

"Then yer tuck up yer shirt-sleeve and run yer 'and down and pass that there crow up to me. There ain't not above two foot o' water in 'er, if there's that."

To your Medway man the lock is as unalterably feminine as his ship to a sailor.

It was she who plunged her arm in the water, and, sure enough, there was the crowbar lying quietly and tamely beside them—"like a pet poodle," as she said.

"Give me ahold of that there crow," said the man. He lay face downward and reached down an arm. Edward stood on the thwart and reached up. The crowbar changed hands, andthe head and shoulders of the deliverer disappeared.

"I don't see what he wants the bar for," said Edward. "The lock's empty. Perhaps he means to go on ahead and open the other locks for us. I wonder who he took us for, and what the poor wretches are 'wanted' for—"

"It's a sinister word in that connection, isn't it?" said she. "Wanted!"

They pushed the boat toward the lower lock gate and held on to the lock-side, waiting till the lock gate should open and they should be able to pass out and begin their journey down the river to the Anchor. But the gates did not open, and almost at once a tremor agitated the boat. Edward tightened his grip of the boat-hook as the incoming rush of water took the boat's nose and held it hard.

"The idiot!" he said. "The silly idiot! He's filling the lock."

He was, and the rush of the incoming water quite drowned any remonstrances that might have been addressed to him. Boat and water rose swiftly, the upper gates opened, and, as they passed through, their deliverer laid his hand on the gunwale, as though to aid the boat's passage. But, instead, he stopped it.

"See 'ere, gov'ner," he said, low and hoarseand exactly like a conspirator, "I couldn't bleat it out for all the country to hear while yer was down in the lock, but I knows as you're wanted and yer may think it lucky it's me as come after yer and not the gov'ner nor yet the police."

"I do really think," said she, softly, "that you're making a mistake. The police don't really want us."

"Oh, I got a bit of candle," was the unexpected rejoinder. "Get the young lady to hold the cloak up so as it don't shine from 'ere to Tunbridge to give yer away like, and yer light the dip and 'ave a squint at this 'ere."

He held out the candle and matches and a jagged rag of newspaper.

"'Ere," he said, "'longside where I'm 'olding of it."

She made a sort of screen of the cloak. Edward lit the candle, and when the flame had darkened and brightened again he read as follows:

Missing—Young lady, height five feet six, slight build, dark hair and eyes, pale complexion. Last seen at Jevington, Sussex. Wearing black chiffon and satin dress, black satin slippers, and a very large French circular cloak with stitched collar. Has no money and no hat. Twenty pounds will be paid to any one giving information as to her whereabouts.

"Well," said Edward, blowing out the candle, "this lady has a hat, as you see, and she hasn't ablack dress and satin slippers. Thank you for letting us through; here's something to get a drink with. Hand over the crowbar, please, and good night to you."

"Not so fast, sir," said the man, still holding on, "and don't make to jab me over the fingers with the boat-'ook, like what you was thinking of. I'm your friend, I am. I see that piece in the paper 'fore ever a one of them, but I never let on. That's why the gov'ner sent me, 'cause why—'e didn't think I knowed, and 'e means to 'ave that twenty pounds hisself."

"But," said she, "you see, I have got a hat and—"

"Yes, miss," said the man, "an' you've got the cloak, large and black and stitched collar, and all; it's that what's give yer away."

"But supposing Iwasthe young lady," she said, grasping Edward's arm in the darkness, and signaling to him not to interfere with feminine diplomacy, "you wouldn't give me up to the police, would you? I wouldn't give you up if the police wanted you."

"'Course I wouldn't," he answered, earnestly. "Ain't that what I'm a-saying? I'm 'ere to 'elp yer do a bolt. The minute I saw that there bit in the paper I says to myself, 'It's them,' and why shouldn't I 'ave the twenty pounds as well as any one else?"

"There," said Edward, in a low voice, "you see! Let me deal with him."

But again her hand implored. "You're going to give us up to the police for twenty pounds?" she said, reproachfully.

He groaned. "'Ow yer do talk!" he said. "Women is all alike when it comes to talking. Stop talking and listen to me. Can't yer understand plain words? What yer got to do is to leave the boat at Mutton Worry Lock—that's three locks up—bunk across the fields to Tunbridge. If yer got money enough—and I'm sartain yer 'as, by the looks of yer—yer 'ire one of them motors and get away as fast as yer can. Get one at the Castle. Say yer going to Brighton, and when yer get away from the town tell the chap to drive t'other way."

"That's a good plan," said she.

"I mapped it all out as I come along," he said, with simple pride. "And, mind yer, I'm trusting yer like I shouldn't have thought I'd 'a' trusted nobody. 'Ave yer got the twenty pounds about yer?" he asked, anxiously.

"No," said she.

"Can't be helped, then." He breathed a sigh of resignation. "I'll just give yer my direction and yer send the ready to me. 'Oo says I don't trust yer?"

"You mean," said Edward, slowly, and would not be checked any longer by that hand on his arm—"you mean that you expect us to give you twenty pounds not to give us up to the police? The police have nothing to do with us. The whole thing's moonshine. Take your hand off the boat and get along home."

"Any man," said he who had been called Neptune—"any man as had the feelings of a man would think of this—young lady. Even if yer was to prove to Poad as yer wasn't wanted for nothin' criminal—it's none so easy to make Poad see anything, neither"—he ended, abruptly, and began anew. "Look 'ere, gov'ner, on account of your lady I say do a bolt. An' why should I be the loser? I only got to stick to the boat, whichever way yer go—up and down—and soon as yer land where there's a copper, lagged yer'll be to a dead cart, and only yourself to thank for it. Whereas I'm only trying to be your friend, if you'd only see it."

"I don't see why you should be so friendly," said Edward, now entirely losing control of the situation.

"Nor I shouldn't see it, neither, if it was only you," was the rejoinder.

"He's quite right," she whispered. "Promise what he wants and let's get away. I know exactlywhat Poad is like. We should never make him understand anything. I couldn't bear it. Let's go. If you've got twenty pounds, give it to him and let's go."

"Think of your young lady," repeated the voice out of the darkness. "If yer promise to let me 'ear by the post, I'll take your word for it. I'm your true friend, and I knows a gentleman when I sees one."

"If you were a true friend," said Edward, "you wouldn't want paying for minding your own business."

"Aw, naw," he said, "'old 'ard, gov'ner. Ain't it a man's own business when there's twenty pounds to be made? Says I to myself, if it's worth some one's while to pay the money to catch 'er, it's well worth the gentleman's while to shell out and keep 'er, and. . . ."

"Oh, hold your tongue!" said Edward. "Go on ahead and get the next lock ready. I'll give you the money. The lady wishes it."

"She's got her 'ead the right way on," said the friend in need. "Pull ahead, sir."

"But you can't, with your finger like that," she said. "I'll pull."

"Why not let me?" Neptune suggested. "We'd get there in 'alf the time," he added, with blighting candor.

So Neptune pulled the boat up to Mutton Worry Lock and the two crouched under the cloak. Charles, who might have been expected to be hostile to so strange a friend, received him with almost overwhelming condescension. At Mutton Worry Lock the deliverer said:

"Now 'ere yer deserts the ship, and 'ere I finds 'er and takes her back. And look 'ere, sir, I'm nobody's enemy but my own, so I am. And of course if I was to 'ave the twenty pounds it's my belief I'd drink myself under the daisies inside of a week. Let me 'ear by the post—William Beale, care of the Anchor Hotel—and send me ten bob a week till the money's gone. It'll come easier to yer, paying it a little at a time like—and better for me in the long run. Yer ought to be a duke, yer ought. I never thought you'd 'a' ris' to the twenty. I'd 'a' been satisfied with five—and that'll show yer whether I'm a true friend or not."

"I really think you are," she said, and laughed gently. "Good-by."

"Good evening, miss, and thank yer, I'm sure. Never say good-by; it's unlucky between friends."

"Here's a sovereign," said Edward, shortly. "Good night. You're jolly fond of the sound of your own voice, aren't you?"

"Sort of treat for me, sir," said Beale, alwayseagerly explanatory. "Don't often 'ear it. D'you know what they calls me at the Anchor, owing to me 'aving learnt to keep my tongue atween my teeth, except among friends? 'William the Silent's' my pet name. A gent as comes for the angling made that up, and it stuck, it did. Bear to the left till you come to the boat-'ouse, cater across the big meadow, and you'll hit Tunbridge all right, by the Printing Works. So long, sir; so long, miss."

Thus they parted.

"What an adventure!" she said; "and I believe William the Silent believes himself to be a model of chivalrous moderation. He would have been satisfied with five pounds."

"I believe he would, too," said Edward, with a grudging laugh. "It's yourbeaux yeux. The man has gone home feeling that he has as good as sacrificed fifteen pounds to a quixotic and romantic impulse. Wretched blackmailer though he is, he could not resist a princess."

"I like William," she said, decisively. "After all, as he says, one must live. Let's leave the cloak under this hedge. Shall we? It's like getting rid of the body. And I'll buy a flaxen wig to-morrow. And do you think it would be a help if I rouged a little and wore blue spectacles? It will be the saving of us, of course."

"I hope to heavens we get a motor in Tunbridge," said he. "You must be tired out."

"I'm not in the least tired," she said. "I'm stepping out like a man, don't you think? I've enjoyed everything beyond words. What a world it is for adventures once you step outside the charmed circle of your relations. Look at all the things that have happened to us already!"

"I didn't mean anything to happen except pleasant things," said he.

"Ah!" she said, with a fleeting seriousness, "life isn't like that. But there's been nothing but pleasant things so far—at least, almost nothing."

"Won't you take my arm?" he said.

"What for?"

"To help you along, I suppose," he said, lamely.

She stopped expressly to stamp her foot. "I don't want helping along," she said. "I'm not a cripple or a baby—and—"

He did not answer. And they walked on in silence through the starry, silent night. She spoke first.

"I don't want helping along," she said. "But I'd like to take your arm to show there's no ill-feeling. You take an arm on the way to dinner," she assured the stars, "and why not on the way to Tunbridge?"

The way to Tunbridge was short. They founda car, and the night held no more adventures for them.

But in a sheltered nook in the weir stream below Jezebel's Lock a candle set up on a plate illuminated the green of alder and ash and the smooth blackness of the water, shedding on a lonely supper that air as of a festival which can only be conferred by candle-light shining on the green of growing leaves. There, out of sight of the towing-path, Mr. William Beale, charmed to fancy and anticipation by the possession of a golden milled token, made himself a feast of the "broken vittles" in the derelict Midlothian basket, and in what was left of the red wine of France toasted the lady of his adventure.

"'Ere's to 'er," he said to the silence and mysteries of wood and water. '"Ere's to 'er. She was a corker, for sure. Sight too good for a chap like 'im," he insisted, adding the natural tribute of chivalry to beauty; drank again and filled his pipe. Edward, from sheer force of habit, had smoothed the parting with tobacco.

"Not but," said William the Silent—"not but what I've known worse than 'im, by long chalks. Ten bob a week—and 'e'll send it along, too—good as a pension. 'E'll send it along."

He did. William the Silent had not misjudged his man.

THE GUILDHALL

"WHERE is Charles?" she asked next day.

Edward had called for her early, had paid the Midlothian's bill and tipped the Midlothian's servants, and now they were in a taxi on their way to Paddington. She had definitely put her finger on the map that morning, and its tip had covered the K's of Kenilworth and Warwick. She was still almost breathless with the hurry with which she had been swept away from the safe anchorage of the hotel, "and couldn't we have the hood down?" she added.

"Charles," said Edward, "is at present boarded out at a mews down Portland Road way, and I think we'd better keep the hood up. Look here! I never thought of the newspapers. This is worse than ever."

He handed her theTelegraph. Yesterday's advertisement was repeated in it—with this addition:

May be in company with tall, fair young man. Blue eyes, military appearance. Possesses large, white bull-terrier.

"Oh dear! They'll track us down," she said, and laughed. "What sleuth-hounds they are! But they can't do anything to me, can they? They can't take me back, I mean. I'm twenty-one, you know. Can't you do as you like when you're twenty-one?"

She looked at the paper again, and now her face suddenly became clouded and her eyes filled with tears. "I never thought of that." She hesitated a moment and handed him the paper, pointing to the place with the finger that had found Warwick and Kenilworth. Below the advertisement touching the young man and the bull-terrier, he read:

Silver Locks—Come back. I am ill and very anxious.Aunt Alice.

Silver Locks—Come back. I am ill and very anxious.

Aunt Alice.

"That means. . .?"

"It means me. I'm Silver Locks—it's her pet name for me. I called my aunts the three bears once, when I was little, in fun, you know. And the others were angry—butshelaughed and called me Silver Locks. And she's called it me ever since. I never thought about her worrying. What am I to do? I must go back. I thought it was too good to last, yesterday," she added, bitterly.

He put the admission away in a safe place, whence later he could take it out and caress it, and said, "Of course you must go back if you wantto. But don't do it without thinking. We meant to talk over our plans yesterday, but somehow we didn't. Let's do it to-day."

"But I can't go to Warwick. I must go back to her—I must."

"If you do," he said, "you won't go back to just her—you'll go back to the whole miserable muddle you've got away from. You'll go back to your other aunts and to your father. Besides, how do you know who put that advertisement in? Think carefully. Is the advertisement like her?"

"It's like her to be anxious and kind," said she.

"I mean, is she the sort of woman to advertise that she's ill? To advertise your pet name—and her own name—so that every one who knows you both and sees the advertisement will know that you are being advertised for? Is that like her?" He ended, astonished at his own penetration.

"No," she said, slowly, "it isn't. And it isn't like her to say she's ill. She never complains."

"She wouldn't use her illness as a lever to move events to her liking?"

"Never!" she said, almost indignantly.

"Then I think that this advertisement is some one else's. Where does she live."

"Hyde Park Square."

"Let us telegraph her, and not go to Warwick."

They stopped the taxi and composed a message. He despatched it.

Did you put advertisement in paper to-day? And are you ill? I am quite well and will write at once. Wire reply to Silver Locks, General Post-Office.

Then they told the man to drive around Regent's Park, to pass the time till there should be an answer.

In the park the trees were already brown, and on the pale, trampled grass long heaps of rags, like black grave-mounds, showed where weary men who had tramped London all night, moved on by Law and Order, inexorable in blue and silver, now at last had their sleep out, in broad sunshine, under the eyes of the richest city in the world. Little children, dirty and poor—their childhood triumphant over dirt and poverty—played happily in the grass that was less grass than dust.

"What a horrible place London is!" she said. "Think of yesterday."

That, too, he put away to be taken out and loved later.

"We won't stay in London," he said, "if the answer is what I think it will be. We'll go out into the green country and decide what we're going to do."

"But if shedidput the advertisement in, it means that she'sveryill. And then I must go to her."

"But if she didn't—and I more and more think she didn't—they may send some one to the General Post-Office post-haste—so it won't do for you to go for the telegram. Do you know the Guildhall Library?"

"No."

"It's a beautiful place—very quiet, very calm. And the officials are the best chaps I've ever found in any library anywhere. We'll go there. You must want to look up something. Let's see—the dates of the publication of Bacon's works. Write your name in the book—any name you like, so long as it isn't your own; then ask one of the officials to help you, and go and sit at one of the side tables—they're like side chapels in a cathedral—and stay there till I come. You'll be as safe and as secret as if you were in the Bastille. And I'll baffle pursuit and come to you as soon as I can."

"Yes," she said, meekly.

"And don't worry," he urged. "The more I think of it, the more certain I am that it was not the aunt you like who wrote that advertisement—"

He was right. The telegram with which, anhour later, he presented himself at the Guildhall Library ran thus:

I did not write advertisement and I am not specially ill, but I am very anxious. Write at once. Aunt Loo and Aunt Enid are both here. I think they must have inserted the advertisement. A.

"Your Aunt Alice is a sportsman," he said, "to warn you like that."

"I told you she was a darling," she answered—and her whole face had lighted up with relief—"and you are the cleverest person in the world! I should never have thought about its not being her doing, never in a thousand years. You deserve a medal and a statue and a pension."

"I don't deserve more than I've got," said he, "nor half so much. The sun shines again."

She flashed a brilliant smile at him, and pushed a brown book along the table.

"I suppose we ought to look studious," she said, "or they'll turn us out. I am so glad Aunt Alice isn't really worse. You don't know how I've felt while you've been away. It seemed so horribly selfish—to have been so happy and all while she was ill and worried. But, of course, you do know."

"Let us go out," he said, putting the books together.

"Yes," she said, "I know all about Bacon. Not that I'll ever want to know."

"I'm not so sure," said he. "Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the Baconians are right, and he was an intellectual giant, almost like Plato and Aristotle rolled into one? We'll go to Stratford some day, and look at Shakespeare's bust and see if we think he could have written 'The Tempest.'"

"You shouldn't judge people by their faces," she said. "Handsome is as handsome does."

"Oh, but you should," said he. "It's handsome does as handsome is. I always go by appearances. Don't you? But of course, I know you do—"

She opened one of the books and began to turn the pages. "Look what I found," she said, and all the time their voices had been lowered to the key of that studious place. "Look, isn't it pretty? And do you see?—the e's are like the Greek θ. Can you read it?"

He read:

"Fair Lucrece, kind Catherine, gentle Jane,But Maria is the dearest name.Robert Swinford, 1863."

"Yes, that's what I make it. It doesn't rhyme, but I expect Maria was very pleased. Do you think they were studying with a stern tutor, and he wrote that and pushed it over to her when noone was looking? It's an odd thing to have written in a Natural History book. There's something more on another page—but it doesn't make sense:

"I am true rew Hebrew—CXIX—101."

"I expect he was just trying a pen. Come, the librarian has his scholarly eye on you."

"I should like to look through all the old books and find out all the names people have written and make stories about them," she said, and he received the curious impression that she was talking against time; there was about her a sort of hanging back from the needful movement of departure. He picked the books up and carried them to the counter, she following, and they walked in silence down the gallery hung with Wouvermans and his everlasting gray horse.

"Let's go into the Hall," he said. So they turned under the arch and went into the beautiful great vaulted Guildhall, where the giants Gog and Magog occupy the gallery, and little human people can sit below on stone benches against the wall, and gaze on the monuments of the elder and the younger Pitt, and talk at long leisure, undisturbed and undisturbing, which is not the case in the Library, as Edward pointed out.

"Now, then," he began.

"Yes," she said, hurriedly. "Something will have to be done about Aunt Alice."

"Yes. But what?"

"I don't know." She turned and leaned one hand on the stone seat so that she faced him. "You do believe that I don't regret coming away? I think it would have been splendid to have gone on—like yesterday—but you see it's impossible."

"No, I don't," he said, stoutly.

She made a movement of impatience. "Oh yes, it is—quite," she said. "However rich you are, you can't go on forever being blackmailed. Every one would know us, or else you'd have to give up Charles, and even then I expect you'd be obliged to pay twenty pounds every three-quarters of an hour. It can't be done. And, besides, we should never know a moment's peace. Wherever we went we should imagine a blackmailer behind every bush, and every one we spoke to might be a detective. It's no use. I must go back. Do say you know I must."

"I don't."

"Well, say you know I don't want to."

"I can't say that . . . because, if you don't want to . . . there's always the old alternative, you know." He was looking straight before him at the majestic form of the Earl of Chatham.

"What alternative?"

"Marrying me," he said, humbly. "Do. I don't believe that you'd regret it."

"When I marry," she said, strongly, "it won't be just because I want to get myself out of a scrape."

"I hoped there might be other considerations," he said, still gazing at the marble. "You were happy yesterday. You said so."

"You talk as though marrying were just nothing—like choosing a partner for a dance. It's like—like choosing what patterns you'd be tattooed with, if you were a savage. It's for life."

"And you can't like me well enough to choose me?"

"I do like you," she answered, with swift and most disheartening eagerness, "I do like you awfully; better than any man I've ever known—oh, miles better—not that that's saying much. But I don't know you well enough to marry you."

"You don't think it would turn out well?"

She faltered a little. "It—it mightn't."

"We could go on being friends just as we are now," he urged.

"It wouldn't be the same," she said, "because there'd be no way out. If we found we didn't like each other, to-morrow, or next month, or on Tuesday week, we could just say good-by andthere'd be no harm done. But if we were married—no—no—no!"

"Do you feel as though you would dislike me by Tuesday week?"

"You know I don't," she said, impatiently, "but I might. Or you might. One never knows. It isn't safe. It isn't wise. I may be silly, but I'm not silly enough to marry for any reason but one."

"And that?"

"That I couldn't bear to part with him, I suppose."

"And you can bear to part with me. There hasn't been much, has there? Just these three days, and all our talks, and. . . ." He stopped. A tear had fallen on her lap. "I won't worry any more," he said, in an altered voice. "You shall do just what you like. Shall I get a taxi and take you straight to your aunt's? I will if you like. Come."

"There's no such hurry as all that," she said, "and it's no use being angry with me because I won't jump over a wall without knowing what's on the other side. No, why I should jump, either," she added, on the impulse of a sudden thought. "You haven't told me that yet. What good would my getting married do to Aunt Alice? I don't mean that I would, because you know I couldn't—evenfor her—but what good would it do if I did?"

"If we were married," he said, with a careful absence of emotion, "we could send your aunt a copy of our marriage certificate and a reference to my solicitor. She would then know that you had married a respectable person with an assured income, instead of which you now appear to be running about the country stealing ducks with Heaven knows who."

"Yes," she said, "I see that. Oh, I have a glorious idea! It will suit you and me and Aunt Alice and make everybody happy!—like in books. Let's have a mock marriage, and forge the certificate."

"Have you ever seen a marriage certificate?"

"No, of course not."

"Well, it would be as difficult to forge as a bank-note."

"Why—have you ever seen one?" she asked, and he hoped it was anxiety he read in her tone.

"Yes; I know a chap who's a registrar. I've witnessed a marriage before now."

"Then there's no need to forge," she said, light-heartedly. "Your friend would give you one of the certificates, of course, if you asked him, and we could fill it in and make Aunt Alice happy."

He laughed, and the sound, echoing in the grayemptiness of the Hall, drew on him the sour glance of a barrister, wigged and gowned, hastening to the mayor's court.

"He's wondering what you've got to laugh at," she said, "and I don't wonder.Idon't know. Why shouldn't we pretend to be married? I'm sure your friend would help us to. Oh, do!" she said, clasping her hands with an exaggerated gesture that could not quite hide the genuine appeal behind it. "Then we sha'n't have to part. I mean I sha'n't have to go back to the aunts and all the worry that I thought I'd got away from."

"You're not really serious."

"But I am. You will—oh, do say you will."

"No," he said, "it's impossible—Princess, don't ask if I can't."

"Then it's all over?"

"I suppose so, if you insist on going back."

"I don't insist. But I must do something about Aunt Alice. She's always been a darling to me. I can't go away and be happy and not care whether she's miserable or not. You'd hate me if I could. I'll go back to-morrow or to-night. You said we should go into the country and think things out. At least we can do that—we can have one more day. Shall we?"

Her sweet eyes tempted and implored.

"What sort of day would it be," he said, "withthe end of everything at the end of it? How could we be happy as we were yesterday?—for you were happy, you owned it. How could we be happy together when we knew we'd got to part in six hours—five hours—two hours—half an hour? Besides, why should I give you the chance to grow any dearer? So as to make it hurt more when you took yourself away from me? No—"

"I didn't know I was dear," she said, in a very small voice.

Perhaps he did not hear it, for he went on: "If the splendid adventure is to end like this, let it end here—now. I've had the two days; you can't take those from me."

"I don't want to take anything from you, but—"

"Let's make an end of it, then," he said, ruthlessly, "since that's what you choose. Good-by, Princess. Let's shake hands and part friends." He rose. "Let's part friends," he repeated, and paused, remembering that you cannot go away and leave a lady planted in the Guildhall. Yet he could not say, "Let us part friends, and now I will call a cab."

She was more expert. "At least," she put it, "we needn't part here in the dark among the images of dead people. Come out into the sunshine and look at the pretty pigeons."

He was grateful to her. In the Guildhall yard the cab would happen, if it happened at all, naturally and without any effect of bathos.

They stood watching the sleek birds strutting on little red feet, and fluttering gray wings in the sunshine. She thought of the wood-pigeon in the wood by the river, and the calm brightness of yesterday held out beckoning hands to her.

"I didn't think it was going to end like this," she said.

"Nor I," he answered, inexorably.

"Are you quite sure it's impossible? The mock marriage, I mean? In books it's always so frightfully easy, even when the girl isn't helping?"

"I'm afraid it's impossible," said he. "I wish it wasn't. Look at that blue chap," he added, indicating a fat pigeon for the benefit of a passing boy. "You must go back to your aunts. And I must go back to . . . oh, well, there's nothing much for me to go back to."

They were walking along King Street now. "It does seem rather as though a sponge were going to pass over the slate . . . and there wouldn't be much left," she said.

He glanced at her, suddenly alert. If she felt that . . . why, then. . . .

He wished that the scene had not been in one of the most frequented streets of the City of London.If it had been in a drawing-room, for instance—her drawing-room—it would have been possible to say the words of parting with something of dignity and finality. But here, with—in the background and not to be evaded—that snorting taxicab over whose closed door their farewells must be made. . . . But need it be across a taxicab door?

"Let us," he said, "take a cab. I will go with you as far as Hyde Park Square."

"Shall we have the hood down?" she asked, with intention. "It doesn't matter now if any one does see us." But he pretended not to hear, and the hood remained as it was.

They were silent all the crowded way along Cheapside, where there were blocks, as usual, and the drivers of lorries and wagons were cheerfully profane. Silent, too, along Newgate Street and New Oxford Street. The driver, being a wise man, turned up Bloomsbury Street to escape from the blocks in Oxford Street; they passed the British Museum and, presently, the Midlothian Hotel. And as they passed it, each thought of the breakfast there only that morning, when she had poured the coffee of one from whom she had then had no mind to part.

"Oh, why are we doing it?" She spoke suddenly, and her speech had the effect of a cry. "We didn'tmean to say good-by, and now we're going to. Don't let's."

"But your aunt," he said, feeling as foolish as any young man need wish. "If you don't go back to her now you'll want to to-morrow—and I can't. . . . I told you why I want to part now, if we are to part. Now, before it gets any worse."

"We shall be at Hyde Park Square in a minute," she said, desperately.

"Yes," he said, "it's nearly over. What number is it? I must tell the man."

"Tell him to turn around and go somewhere else—into the country; we said we would, you know. I'm not going back to Hyde Park Square. Tell him. . . ."

"Princess," he said, "I can't bear it. Let him go on."

"But I'm not asking you to bear anything. Don't you understand?"

"Not. . . ?"

"Yes, I will; if you'll ask me."

"You'll marry me?"

"Yes," she said, "rather than have everything end in absolute silliness, like this."

He looked at her, at her clasped hands and the frown of her great resolve. He perceived that he was worth something to her—that she was prepared to pay a price—the price he set—rather thanlose him altogether. Her eyes met his with a mingling of courage and desperation, as of one who has chosen a difficult and dangerous path, one who makes a great sacrifice, leads a forlorn hope. And his eyes dwelt for a moment on hers, appreciatively, thoughtfully. And in that moment his resolve was taken.

"No," he said, "you didn't want to jump the wall without knowing what it would be like on the other side. I won't have an unwilling wife. On the other hand, I won't lose you now, Princess, for a thousand fathers and ten thousand aunts. Make up your mind to the mock marriage, and that shall be the way out."

"But I thought you said it was impossible."

"So it was. But it isn't now. I've been thinking."

She leaned back, turned toward him from the corner, and faced him with fearless eyes.

"What a nightmare of a day it's been," she said. "Aren't you glad we're awake again? When can I send the certificate?" she asked, eager and alert.

"At the earliest possible moment," said he. "I must see my friend about it at once. Would you mind waiting for me—say in St. Paul's? And then we'll end our day in the country, after all."

"You are good," she said, and laid her hand fora fleeting instant on his arm. "I do think it's good of you to give way about the mock marriage. You know I had really set my heart on it. Now everything will be plain sailing, won't it? And we'll go to Warwick the minute we're mock-married, because my putting my finger on it and Kenilworth ought to count, oughtn't it?"

"It shall," he said, gravely.

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