Mr Frazer glanced over his shoulder. For some time conversation with his passenger had languished. He had told her where he kept his little store of books, and she had withdrawn into the van, nominally to read one; but that she was doing more thinking than reading was a fact which she would not have cared to deny. Now, attracted by the appearance of the stranger, she had drawn close to the open casement. Stopping the van, Mr Frazer descended to the ground. He spoke to the man on the bareribbed horse. "Would you mind coming on one side for a moment?" They moved to where the grass fringed the road, and where, if they spoke in lowered tones, they were out of earshot of the girl at the window. "Are you sure of what you say?" The two men looked each other in the face. Frazer saw that this man was a wild-looking fellow, whose experience of the police and their methods was probably of a practical kind. So far as he could judge he seemed to be sufficiently in earnest. "Dead sure. I tell you they're looking out for you for all they're worth. I shouldn't be surprised but what they're looking out for you over the whole countryside. I know 'em?" He both sounded and looked as if he did. "Just this side the town, about a couple of miles from where we are, there's one of 'em coming along the road; I dare lay he's coming to meet you." "That's kind of him." "I don't say he is, mind; I'm only telling you to look out." "Thank you; I'm obliged by your doing so." He slipped a coin into the other's long, thin, brown hand. The man looked at it. "Here, what's this? It ain't this I'm after; I told you the cops was on the watch same as I'd tell anyone, no matter what they'd done. However, if you have got this half-sovereign to give away, I don't mind taking it; and I thank you. It may make all the difference to me. Sorry I can't stop to lend you a hand, in case one's wanted; but, the fact is, some of them wouldn't mind seeing me as well as you, and, as I'm not the only one that's in it, time's precious." What might have been meant for a smile passed over the man's saturnine visage. Mr Frazer stood watching him, as he urged his bony steed along the road. It seemed as if Ben Hitchings, having come back to sense, had found a friend sooner than was quite desirable; or perhaps his wife had found him, and this was his revenge. He wondered how the lad had managed to set the machinery of the law in action so quickly. Moving towards the van he was met with the question he had expected. "What did that man want?" asked Dorothy. She had her head half out of the window. Stooping, he passed his hand up and down the mare's leg. Then, lifting her foot, he asked a question of his own: "Would you mind getting out and walking a little?" "Why don't you tell me what that man wanted?" "What! that fellow who's gone down the road? He brought me a message." "What message? From whom? I heard what he said." "Then, if you heard, you won't need me to tell you."