prophesied Pam, who was sitting on a low rock, with her back against another, learning certain enthralling rules by heart from a certain book, "it will be quite calm and oily, and presently you’ll have a cracking storm. I feel it in my head. Glad I’m not going. Crow, do you remember the day when we couldn’t get anywhere, and we threw the slices of beef overboard and they went with us for miles--sort of cheek by jowl, sitting on the sea."

"That was before the War," said Crow, evading the thought, "one doesn’t have slices of meat now, of anything, thank goodness. Beef and ham pies would sink."

"Not before we’ve eaten them," put in Adrian calmly, "come along, Crow. I say, Pam--supposing we don’t get to Peterock, but go to somewhere down coast beyond Ramsworthy, do you mind suggesting to Mother that we are playing on the sands at Netheroot or Tamerton? Either would do, ’fraid there’ll be no wind for Salterne."

"Can you get your hair cut at Netheroot?" asked Pamela.

"No, don’t suppose so; why?"

"Only because Mother likes to picture you on shore most of the time, when you go sailing, I mean--it’s so nice and dry; and the sea is wet as wet can be! If there is a thunderstorm you’ll go ashore, shan’t you?"

"Like a shot," declared Adrian, as he pushed against the rocky landing platform, and drove the dinghy dancing over the breaking ripples.

Pamela watched, sleepily, as the boat made for the white yawl. She rejoiced that she had remained on land, when the sails went up under Addie’s strenuous hauling, yet admired wholeheartedly as the flop of the moorings’ buoy set free the yacht, and, leaning over very gently, she drifted broadside on towards Bell Ridge--the northern headland.

Even as she drifted, silent as a shadow, the far faint rumble of summer thunder murmured from inland, and Pam said "thought so" contentedly. After that she shut her eyes and reviewed a succession of plans; something ought to be done now she had a day to herself, or an afternoon at any rate, no one to ask inconvenient questions either, for Hughie being in the secret required but a hint. He was the most circumspect person living.

Sitting there with her eyes closed Pamela arranged a practical plan. She would go for a walk after lunch, on the pretext of taking her bicycle to Timothy Batt’s house at Folly Ho. Timothy was the carrier, and lived with his old horse, at the 

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