He made his way in, managed to prop a sack against the small cobwebbed window, fastened the door with a rusty bolt, and brought out an electric torch he always carried in his pocket. There was not a house within a long distance. There were no keepers now on Colonel Shepherd's estate. Darkness--the woods--and the wild creatures in them--were his only companions. Half a mile away, no doubt, Rachel in her smart new parlour was talking to the Canadian fellow. _Tanner!_ Ye gods! At last he had the clue to it all. X Dempsey did not find Rachel Henderson at home when he called at Great End Farm, after his meeting with his unknown companion on the common. Ellesborough and Rachel had gone to London for the day. Ellesborough's duties at the Ralstone camp were in a state of suspended animation, since, in these expectant days before the signing of the armistice, there had been a general slackening, as though by silent and general consent, in the timber felling due to the war throughout the beautiful district in which Millsborough lay. Enough damage had been done already to the great wood-sanctuaries. On one pretext or another men held their hands. Ellesborough then was free to take time off when he would, and to spend it in love-making. The engagement had been announced, and Ellesborough believed himself a very happy man--with the slight drawbacks that may be imagined. In the first place--although, as he became better acquainted with Rachel's varying moods and aspects, he fell more and more deeply under the charm of her temperament--a temperament at once passionate and childish, crude, and subtle, with many signs, fugitive and surprising, of a deep and tragic reflectiveness; he became also more and more conscious of what seemed to him the lasting effects upon her of her miserable marriage. The nervous effects above all; shown by the vague "fears" of which she had spoken to him, on one of their early walks together; and by the gulfs of depression and silence into which she would often fall, after periods of high, even wild spirits. It was this constant perception of a state of nervous suffering and irritability in this splendid physical creature--a state explained, as he thought, by her story, which had put him instantly on his guard, when that sinister vision at the window had sprung for a moment out of the darkness. Before almost he could move towards it, it had gone. And with a farewell smile at the woman he had just been holding in his arms, a smile which betrayed nothing, he had hurried away from her to investigate the mystery. A hasty word to Janet Leighton in the kitchen, and he was making a rapid circuit of the farm, and searching the farm-yard; with no results whatever.