Miss Hart rang the bell and in the meantime we looked about the room. It was all in vain. We could find no trace of it, nor could the servant who answered the summons give us any information. She had seen it in its usual place early in the morning when she had been dusting. Since then she had not entered the room. "Deuced queer thing!" declared Cecil, when at last we had relinquished the search. "Deuced queer!" he repeated meditatively, with his hands thrust deep down in his trousers' pockets and his eyes resting idly upon de Cartienne's face. "But we can't do anything more, that's certain. We really must be off, Milly. We've been here almost an hour already, and Brandy and Soda must be getting restless, and you must be famished, I'm sure, Morton. Come along! Good-bye, Milly! Keep your spirits up, old girl! The governor'll be bound to turn up again in a day or two. And don't you worry about the photograph. It must be somewhere." "But it isn't!" she declared tearfully. "We've looked everywhere! Oh, what shall I do?" Cecil assumed a most lugubrious expression and looked down sympathetically into her tear-stained face. She certainly was uncommonly pretty. "You go on, you fellows," he said. "I'll be out in a minute. I'll drive, Leonard. Don't think you're quite up to it." de Cartienne nudged my arm and we went off together and made our way up the street to the inn, under the covered archway of which the trap was drawn up. In a few minutes Cecil joined us. "Hope I haven't kept you waiting," he said, as he lighted a cigarette and clambered up to the box-seat. "No, you come in front, Morton. That's right. Very odd about that photograph, isn't it? It's gone and no mistake. We've been having another look round." "Nonsense!" exclaimed de Cartienne impatiently. "What a fuss about a trifle! A girl has no memory at all! I expect she moved it herself. Bet you it turns up by the morning." "I think not," Cecil replied quietly, as he gathered up the reins. "Now then, hold on behind!" We rattled off down the street and out into the open country again at a pace which precluded any conversation. The low hedges and stunted trees by the roadside seemed to fly past us, and a sudden turn, which almost jerked me from my seat, brought us in sight of a wide semi-circle of twinkling lights, which seemed to stretch right across the horizon. "What are they?" I asked, pointing forward. "Those? Oh, fishing-smacks!" answered Cecil. "Is that the sea, then?" I asked eagerly. He burst out laughing. "Why, what else do you suppose it is?" he exclaimed. "Can't you hear it?" I bent my head and listened. The faint night breeze was just sufficient to carry to our ears the dull, monotonous roar of an incoming tide. "Not a very cheerful row, is it?" observed Cecil. "Cheerful! I call it the most infernally miserable sound I ever heard!" growled de Cartienne, from the back seat, "enough to give a fellow the horrors any day!"