It was so late that Ludgate Circus was deserted except for a ramshackle cab with a drunken driver pouring forth a hoarse story of a mean fare to a sleepy policeman leaning against a lamp post. The sight of two gentlemen on foot when all 'buses had stopped running for the night raised fleeting hopes in the cabman's pessimistic breast, and changed the flow of his narrative into a strident appeal for hire, based on the plea, which he called on the policeman to support, that he hadn't turned a wheel that night, and amplified with a profanity which only the friendliest understanding with the policeman could have permitted him to pour forth without fear of consequences. He intimated his readiness to drive them anywhere between the _Angel_ on one side of London and the _Elephant_ on the other for three bob, or, being a bit of a sport, would toss them to make it five bob or nothing. The boundaries, he explained in a husky parenthesis, were fixed not so much by his own refusal to travel farther afield as by his horse's unwillingness to go into the blasted suburbs. As his importunities passed unregarded he damned them both with the terrible earnestness of his class, and rumbled back into his dislocated story with the languid policeman. Colwyn kept his car in a garage off the Bridge Street archway. Thither they proceeded, and waited while the car was got ready for the roads by a shock-headed man who broke the stillness of the night with prodigious yawns, and then stood blinking like an owl as he leaned against the yard gates watching the detective backing the car down the declivity of the passage into Bridge Street. Before they had reached it, he banged the gates behind him with another tremendous yawn, and went back to his interrupted slumber in the interior of a limousine. It was a fine night for motoring. There was a late moon, and the earlier rain had laid the dust and left the roads in good condition. Colwyn cautiously threaded the crooked tangle of narrow streets and sharp corners between Blackfriars and Victoria, but as the narrow streets opened into broader ways he increased the speed of his high-powered car, and by the time London was left behind for the quiet meadows and autumn-scented woods they were racing along the white country roads at a pace which caused the roadside avenues of trees to slide past them like twin files of soldiers on the double. Mile after mile slipped away in silence. Beyond an occasional direction of route by Phil there was no conversation between the two men in the car. Phil sat back looking straight in front of him, apparently absorbed in thought, and the car occupied Colwyn's attention. When they reached the heights above Heredith, Phil pointed to the green flats beneath and the old house in a shroud of mist. "That is the moat-house," he said. "The carriage drive is from the village side." And with that brief indication that they were nearing their journey's end he once more settled back into silence.