At last the bell in the ivy-clad church tower chimed the hour of five. The wild winter night was past, and it was morning, though still dark. The old rector drew aside the blind, but the dawn was not yet showing. The fire was out, the lamp burned dim and was smoking, and the room was now cold and cheerless.

“I wonder where Roddy can possibly be?” again murmured the old man.

Then, still leaving the front door unlocked, he blew out the lamp and retired for a few hours’ rest.

At noon Roderick Homfray had not returned, and after sending a message to Doctor Denton and receiving word that he had not seen the young man since the previous morning, Mr Homfray began to be seriously alarmed. He went about the village that afternoon making inquiries, but nobody seemed to have seen him after he had passed through the churchyard after the evening service.

Only Mr Hughes, who kept a small tobacconist’s at the further end of the village, apparently had any information to give.

“I passed along the Guildford road about ten o’clock or so, and I believe I saw Mr Roddy talking to a man—who was a stranger. I noticed the man in church. He sat in one of the back pews,” said old Mr Hughes.

In an instant Norton Homfray became alert.

Could Roddy have been speaking with Gordon Gray?

“Are you quite sure it was my son?” he asked eagerly.

“Well, it was rather dark, so I could not see the young man’s face. But I’m sure that the other was the stranger.”

“Then you are not absolutely certain it was Roddy?”

“No, Mr Homfray, I couldn’t swear to it, though he looked very much like Mr Roddy,” was the old tobacconist’s reply. “My sight isn’t what it used to be,” he added.

Still, the incident aroused suspicions in the rector’s mind. Was it possible that Gray had told Roddy the truth, and the latter had gone off with his father’s enemy? In any case, his son’s absence was a complete mystery.

That evening Mr Homfray called at the village police station and there saw the inspector of the Surrey County 

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