“I shan’t see my moonlit Moor to-night after all!” she continued. “I wonder what has happened to make them change their plans?” Burke volunteered no suggestion but stood staring moodily at the swiftly receding figure of the telegraph boy. “Well,” Jean braced herself to meet the disappointment, “there’s nothing for it but for you to run me back home, Geoffrey. We ought to start at once.” “Very well. I’ll go and get the car out,” he answered. “I suppose it’s the only thing to be done.” He moved off in the direction of the garage, Jean walking rather disconsolately beside him. “I _am_ disappointed!” she declared. “I just hate the sight of a telegraph boy! They always spoil things. I rather wonder you get your telegrams delivered at this outlandish spot,” she added musingly. “Oh, of course we have to pay mileage. There’s no free delivery to the ‘back o’ beyond’!” As he spoke, Burke vanished into the semi-dusk of the garage, and presently Jean heard sounds suggestive of ineffectual attempts to start the engine, accompanied by a muttered curse or two. A few minutes later Burke reappeared, looking Rather hot and dusty and with a black smear of oil across his cheek. “You’d better go back to the bungalow,” he said gruffly. “There’s something gone wrong with the works, and it will take me a few minutes to put matters right.” Jean nodded sympathetically and retreated towards the house, leaving him to tinker with the car’s internals. It was growing chilly--the “cool of the evening” manifests itself early up on Dartmoor--and she was not at all sorry to find herself indoors. The wind had dropped, but a curious, still sort of coldness seemed to be permeating the atmosphere, faintly moist, and, as Jean stood at the window, gazing out half absently, she suddenly noticed a delicate blur of mist veiling the low-lying ground towards the right of the bungalow. Her eyes hurriedly swept the wide expanse in front of her. The valleys between the distant tors were hardly visible. They had become mere basins cupping wan lakes of wraithlike vapour which, even as she watched them, crept higher, inch by inch, as though responding to some impulse of a rising tide. Jean had lived long enough in Devonshire by this time to know the risks of being caught in a mist on Dartmoor, and she sped out of the room, intending to go to the garage and warn Burke that he must hurry. He met her on the threshold of the bungalow, and she turned back with him into the room she had just quitted. “Are you ready?” she asked eagerly. “There’s a regular moor mist coming on. The sooner we start the better.” He looked at her oddly. He was rather pale and his eyes were curiously bright. “The car won’t budge,” he said. “I’ve been tinkering at her all this time to no purpose.” Jean stared at him, a vague apprehension of disagreeable possibilities presenting itself to her mind. Their predicament would be an extremely awkward one if the car remained recalcitrant!