Avice turned off into what appeared to be no more than a sheep-track across the heather. Within a few minutes they were not only quite alone, but out of sight of any human habitation. It seemed to Brereton that they were suddenly shut into a world of their own, as utterly apart from the little world they had just left as one star is from another. But even as he thought this he saw, far away across the rising and falling of the heather-clad undulations, the moving lights of a train that was speeding southward along the coast-line from Norcaster, and presently the long scream of a whistle from its engine came on the light breeze that blew inland from the hidden sea, and the sight and sound recalled him to the stern realities of life. "Listen, then, carefully," he began. "And bear in mind that I'm putting what I believe to be safety of other men in your hands. It's this way...." Avice Harborough listened in absolute silence as Brereton told her his carefully arranged story. They walked slowly across the moor as he told it; now dipping into a valley, now rising above the ridge of a low hill; sometimes pausing altogether as he impressed some particular point upon her. In the moonlight he could see that she was listening eagerly and intently, but she never interrupted him and never asked a question. And at last, just as they came in sight of a light that burned in the window of a little moorland cottage, snugly planted in a hollow beneath the ridge which they were then traversing, he brought his story to an end and turned inquiringly to her. "There!" he said. "That's all. Now try to consider it without prejudice--if you can. How does it appear to you?" Instead of replying directly the girl walked on in silence for a moment or two, and suddenly turned to Brereton with an impulsive movement. "You've given me your confidence and I'll give you mine!" she exclaimed. "Perhaps I ought to have given it before--to you or to Mr. Tallington--but--I didn't like. I've wondered about Mallalieu! Wondered if--if he did kill that old man. And wondered if he tried to put the blame on my father out of revenge!" "Revenge!" exclaimed Brereton. "What do you mean?"