Nugent, who was at the wheel, extended his hand, and when Violet had settled herself at his side and the chauffeur had unveiled the great acetylene lamps, he sent the car spinning for Ottermouth at half-speed. But he avoided the road that would take him through the main street of the little town, and struck into a series of country lanes that brought them by a detour to The Hut, without having to pass more than a solitary farmhouse. "We are in luck so far," he said when they had swept up the drive and he had assisted Violet to alight. "We didn't meet a soul all the way. Dixon, have the car ready here. I shall want to take Miss Maynard back to the Manor House presently. Now," he added, beckoning Violet to follow him, "we will go round this way, please." The girl, all her mind set on her purpose, obeyed like one in a dream. She wanted to meet Leslie and bring him to reason. It mattered nothing to her how she reached her goal so long as her task was swiftly accomplished, and she knew that the shortest way to the sea was through the grounds of The Hut. So without demur she followed Nugent round the house to the lawns and gardens at the back. "It would be best to be perfectly silent," her guide whispered as they struck across the greensward. "My servants may not all have gone to bed yet, or some one else might be about." "I--I thought I heard something there," replied Violet, laying a hand on his arm and glancing apprehensively at the spectral outline of the grotto, the walls of which gleamed white amid the gloom of the shrubbery. "Only the breeze in the foliage," Nugent murmured hastily, and, taking the girl's hand almost roughly, he hurried her to the door on to the moor, opened it, and as quickly closed it when they had passed through. "There!" he said in a tone of unaffected relief, "we shall find no more obstacles in our way but a short walk through the heather and a scramble down the steps to the beach. Chermside will be waiting for us at the foot of Colebrook Chine." But that prophecy was not to be verified. When at length they stood on the pebbles of the shore the figure which emerged from a nook in the cliff was not Leslie Chermside, but Bill Tuke, "The Bootlace Man." "Well, where is Mr. Chermside?" Nugent demanded of him angrily. "It's not my fault that he ain't here, sir," the fellow replied in seemingly surly protest. "Nothing I could say would make him stop. As soon as the launch came he insisted on going off to the steamer." Violet uttered a cry of anguish. Her self-set task had failed. Not only had her lover fled, but he had fled like a craven without keeping the tryst which he had himself sought. "Did he leave no message?" Nugent inquired, in a tone of perplexity that sounded perfectly natural.