“What’s this?” he exclaimed, and pulled up sharply. A barrier confronted them. “We’ve got into a private road! And it’s closed for repairs. Look!” He pointed to the board which clearly stated this fact. “It’s been closed for a long time, too, from the look of it. You’ve muddled the contract, you poor nut!” Barry sat staring blankly ahead. At last: “Try back,” he suggested. “I can’t make this out.” Jim grunted, backed out to a gap, turned, and retraced the path to the high road. Slowing up: “Now, boss,” he demanded, “what next? Where’s the princess?” Barry, who had been sitting with knitted brows, looked up sharply. “Jim,” he declared, “that _was_ the right road--and it was open on the night I drove along it!” “We might park the bus and walk,” Jim suggested helpfully. “No,” Barry replied; “I don’t feel fit enough. Besides----” “Well?” Jim prompted. “Why was the road closed? There’s a mystery here, Jim, and I shall never solve it by blundering in like a bull at a fence.” “Then what do we do now, boss?” Jim demanded. “Go home!” was the reply. “Right!” said Jim, and headed east for New York. “_Once upon a time_,” he recited, in a loud singsong, “_there was a princess_…” CHAPTER IV. SHADED WINDOWS In the days that followed, Barry Cumberland resigned himself to waiting. He was soon practically fit again, however, and he made up his mind to employ his first morning of freedom in a methodical search for the scene of his accident. Working from the nearest base where he could garage the convalescent Rolls, he set out on foot; and in something less than half an hour had reached the barricaded road. He had come alone. Jim Sakers’s open scepticism upon the subject to which he usually alluded as “Barry’s princess” had begun to jar upon the victim’s sensitiveness. He made a slight detour through close-set trees and came out upon the private road twenty yards beyond. There was nothing to show that anything in the nature of repairs was taking place, and he proceeded confidently, looking about him in quest of some landmark. He found none. But presently an opening appeared on the left. Barry turned into it, pulled up, and suppressed a cry of triumph. Hitherto completely hidden by embracing woods, a house lay forty yards back from the road. Its grounds were surrounded by a high wall, and its construction was memorable because of a turret which crowned the easterly wing of the building. Barry stood watching it for a time, and groping for another memory which the sight of the house provoked, but which nevertheless eluded him. He realized from its situation that upon the southeast it must look sheerly down into a valley. When, and where, before, had he seen such a house? Try how he might he could not remember. Had he seen it in a dream? Surely he had looked down upon it from a great height! But when? Had the vision been prophetic--an omen? If so, an omen of what?