heard a groan, and in her fright nearly dropped the candle. But being a brave girl, she plucked up courage and listened. There came a second groan--from the parlour. Lesbia immediately opened the door and entered. There on the floor she saw a man bound and gagged and stiff, with nothing alive about him but his eyes. And those were the eyes of George Walker. CHAPTER III ANOTHER MYSTERY Lesbia Hale was small, fragile and, in a degree, romantic; but in sufficiently strange contrast, her frame was strong and her nature practical. An ordinary girl would have screamed and fainted, or perhaps would have run away. Lesbia did none of these things. She turned pale, it is true, and she trembled violently as she stared with dilated eyes at the bound form of her lover. Then it came upon her with a rush that immediate aid was required, and without even calling for Tim, she set down her candlestick on a convenient chair, and knelt beside the unfortunate young man. He was certainly in a very bad way; but how he came to be in such a plight, Lesbia, with characteristic commonsense, did not wait to inquire. The first thing was to loosen him, and revive him with wine: then she could ask questions. The answers promised to be interesting. First she dexterously removed the handkerchief from across his mouth, with which George had been gagged in a clumsy manner. This she threw aside with a passing thought that later she would learn to whom it belonged, and then proceeded to unloosen the knot of the rope with which her lover was bound. There was only one rope and only one knot, and when she had disentangled the somewhat complicated fastening, she unwound the cord which curled round him from his broad shoulders to his ankles. With his arms glued to his sides and his feet pressed closely together, George Walker had been tied up with yards of brand-new manila rope, so that he could not move, and was trussed as stiffly as any fowl prepared for the market. And the person or persons who had bound him thus, to make assurance doubly sure, had struck him a heavy blow on the back of his head. Lesbia discovered this by the half-dry blood which clotted his curly hair. "What does it all mean?" asked Lesbia, when
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