He felt weary. He threw himself on the springy turf, heedless of damp or wet. A great, black fissure yawned at his feet, a gaping rent in the ground seeming to straggle into unknown depths. A few boulders lay about the little hollow where he rested. The fissure in front of him was known to the neighbourhood as Smugglers' Ladder. Bats arose from the dark cleft and circled in the night air. The tide was in, and the lapping of the waves in the chasm beneath came up with a tuneful monotony through this gigantic telephone--but all else was silent as the grave. Far above twinkled the solemn stars, and the red, pointed moon looked angrily down. Then the distant chime from Wandsborough steeple rang out the hour of nine. Only nine! Yet it might be midnight, so still and lifeless was this out-of-the-world hush. A soothing lethargy crept over him. Stillness-- silence--rest. After the warring turmoil of a great city, this was as another world. But it was winter, and soon a shiver from head to foot reminded him that the more prosaic side of life, i.e. bed, had its attractions. A few minutes more and he would be on his way to Battisford, but a low whistle, unmistakably human, recalled in a trice his wandering reflections. It was repeated, and simultaneously the figure of a man appeared on the skyline. The stranger did not move. He felt no apprehension, whoever the other might be. He was without hope in this world and therefore absolutely without fear, and so he sat with the lower part of his face resting in his hands, perfectly motionless, while the other approached him, saying in a low whisper: "Why didn't you answer my signal, dear?" Then the stranger arose, with a harsh laugh. "Ha-ha-ha! I'm afraid you're the victim of a trifling `sell' to-night, Hubert Dorrien." To say that the new-comer was astonished would be to say next to nothing at all. He was thunderstruck--speechless; and his face was as white as a sheet, as he stood rooted to the earth--gazing at this unexpected apparition as one transfixed. "G-Good God! Who are you, sir, and what do you want with me?" he stammered at last. "Ha-ha-ha! Good boy, Hubert. Good boy! Mother's darling and papa's expectant and deserving heir," went on the stranger in the same harsh, jeering tone. "And now, may I ask, who is the fair frail one with whom this most delightful moonlight tryst was to have come off?" Excess of courage was at no time one of Hubert Dorrien's besetting faults, and now he simply shivered, and his lips trembled. All of which the stranger noted as the moonlight played upon the white, terrified face. "I don't know who the devil you are, sir--and I don't care," he found courage to bluster at last. "But anyhow, I shall wish you good-evening, for I must go," and he made a movement. "But you are not going, Hubert Dorrien, not yet at least. Not until you and I have had a little talk together," said the stranger, laying a firm hand upon his shoulder.