"Ah! it was one of his favourites. He must have been in great distress. This only confirms what I said to you just now about disturbing him. I beg you to go--now, at once, immediately--and never, never return. It is so bad for my father to be disturbed. He has so excitable a temperament. Please, please leave at once----" "But my match-box," said Harkness. "Give me your London address. I promise you that it shall be forwarded to you." He held the candle high and swept the room with it, the sudden shadows playing on the walls, like a troop of dancing scarecrows. "You don't see it anywhere?" Harkness looked about him, then up at the face of the chattering clock. Time enough had elapsed. She was safe away by now. "Very well, then," he said. "I will give you my address. Here is my card." Young Crispin, who seemed in great agitation and, under this emotion, a new and different human being from anything that Harkness had believed to be possible, took the card, and with the candle moved into the hall. He turned the key, opened the door, and the night air rushed in blowing the flame. "I wish you good-night," he said, holding out his hand. Harkness touched it--it was cold and hard--bowed, said: "I must apologise again for disturbing you. I would only reassure you that it is for the last time." Both bowed. The door closed, and Harkness was once again in the garden. III Jabez was waiting for him. They were both in the shadow; beyond them the lawn was scattered with star-dust mist as though sewn with immortal daisies; the stars above were veiled. The world was so still that it seemed to march forward with the rhythm of the sea, that could be heard stamping now like a whole army of marching men. "They are waiting for you, sir," Jabez whispered. "I was terrible feared you'd be too long in there." They moved, keeping to the shadows, and reached the path that led to the door in the wall. Here their feet crunched on the gravel, and every step was an agony of anticipated alarm. It seemed to Harkness that the house sprang into life, that lights jumped in the windows, figures passed to and fro, but he dared not look back, and then Jabez's hand was on the door, he was through and out safely in the wide free road. Then, for an instant, he did look back, and there the house was, dark, motionless, rising out of the trees like part of the rock on which it was built, the high tower climbing pale in the mist above it. Only an instant's glimpse, because there was the jingle, the pony, Dunbar and the girl. An absurd emotion took possession of him at the sight of them. He had been through a good deal that evening, and the picture of them, safe, honest, sane, after the house and the company that he had left, came with the breeze from the sea reassuring him of normality and youth.