Then the excitement of the midnight adventure appealed to her--the swift run in the motor-car through the wild night, and the wonderful possibilities of the search at the end of the ride. So she went, and her appetite for adventure was all but satisfied by a narrowly-averted collision with another car speeding in the opposite direction. She did not see the occupants of the other car, but she hoped they had had as great a fright as she. As a matter of fact, neither of the two men had given a second thought to their danger; one’s mind was entirely and completely filled with her image, and the other was brooding on telephones. She had no time to tire of the excitement of the night--the run across soaking heaths and through dead villages, where little cottages showed up for a moment in the glare of the headlights, then faded into the darkness. Too soon she came to a familiar stretch of the road, and the car slowed down so that they might not pass the tiny grass lane that led to Flairby Mill. They came to it at last, and the car bumped cautiously over deep cart ruts, over loose stones, and through long drenched grasses till there loomed out of the night the squat outlines of Flairby Mill. Once upon a time, before the coming of cheap machinery, Flairby Mill had been famous in the district, and the rumble of its big stones went on incessantly, night and day; but the wheel had long since broken, its wreck lay in the bed of the little stream that had so faithfully served it; its machinery was rust and scrap iron, and only the tiny dwelling-house that adjoined was of value. With little or no repair the homestead had remained watertight and weatherproof, and herein had Kathleen stored the odds and ends of her father’s household. The saddles, shields, spears, and oddments he had collected in his travels, and the modest library that had consoled the embittered years of his passing, were all stored here. Valueless as the world assesses value, but in the eyes of the girl precious things associated with her dead father. The tears rose to her eyes as Spedding, taking the key from her hand, fitted it into the lock of a seventeenth-century door, but she wiped them away furtively. Spedding utilized the acetylene lamp of the car to show him the way into the house. “You must direct me, Miss Kent,” he said, and Kathleen pointed the way. Up the oaken stairs, covered with dust, their footsteps resounding hollowly through the deserted homestead, the two passed. At the head of the stairs was a heavy door, and acting under the girl’s instructions, the lawyer opened this. It was a big room, almost like a barn, with a timbered ceiling sloping downward. There were three shuttered windows, and another door at the farther end of the room that led to a smaller room.