seconds of cold brilliance—a natural phenomenon all the more remarkable inasmuch as no cloud flecked the sky.

Thus, in silence, they neared the limp individuality huddled dejectedly on a strip of turf by the roadside. To Armathwaite's carefully suppressed amusement, he saw that the wanderer was indeed wearing thin, patent-leather shoes.

"Percy!" cried the girl.

Percy looked up again. He drew the fore-finger of his right hand around the back of his neck between collar and skin, as though his head required adjustment in this new position.

"Hallo, Meg!" he said, and the greeting was not only languid but bored.

"What in the world are you doing here?" she went on, halting in front of him.

"I dunno," he said. "I'm beastly fagged, I can tell you—"

Armathwaite smiled, but Marguérite laughed outright.

"There's nothing to grin at," came the querulous protest. "Once upon a time I labored under the impression that England was a civilized country, but now I find it's habitable only in parts, and this isn't one of the parts, not by a jolly long way. I say, Meg, you booked to Leyburn, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"But you never walked over this moor?"

"I did."

"Well, I wish I'd known as much about Yorkshire before I started as I do now—that's all."

Again he twisted his neck and freed it from the chafing contact of a tight collar. After a curious peep at Armathwaite, he bent a pair of gray-green eyes on the turf at his feet once more.

"Percy, don't be stupid, but tell me why you've come," cried Marguérite. "There's no bad news from home, is there?"

"No—that's all right. Edie sent me."

"Why?"

"You said you'd wire or write. When no telegram came yesterday, and no letter this morning, she bundled me off by the next train. 'Go and see what has become 

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