Day after day saw her on the road; more often than not her way lay towards Starden village. She would ride the six and a half miles to Starden, wait there for a time, and then ride back. She never called at Starden Hall. Helen knew nothing of these trips. Connie watched the girl with misgivings and doubts, and Ellice knew that the elder girl was watching her. “Connie, I want to speak to you,” she said quietly one morning. “Yes, darling?” Ellice slipped her small brown hand into Connie’s. “I—I know that you are worrying, dear, that you are anxious—and for me.” Connie nodded, tears came into her eyes. “I want you to understand, Connie, that I—I promise you I will do nothing—nothing, I will never do anything unless I come to you first and tell you. I promise you that I will do nothing—nothing that I should not do, nothing mad and foolish and wrong, unless I come to you first and tell you just what I am going to do.” “Thank you, dear, for telling me this. It lifts a great weight and a great anxiety from my heart. Thank you, dear—oh, Ellice darling, I thought once that it would be a fine thing for him, but now—now I could wish it otherwise!” Another moment and the girl was in her arms, clasping her passionately, and kissing her passionately and gratefully. Then suddenly Ellice broke away, and a few minutes later was riding hard down the road to Starden. It was always to Starden that she rode. Always she passed the great gates of Starden Hall, yet never even glanced at them. She rode into the little village, propped her bicycle against the railings that surrounded the old stocks that stood on the village green, and there sat on a seat and watched the ducks in the green village pond and the children playing cricket. Then, after waiting perhaps an hour, she would mount and ride slowly back to Buddesby again. It was the programme that she carried out this morning. It was twelve o’clock when she came in sight of Buddesby village, a mile distant as yet. “Missy! Missy!” Someone was calling. Ellice slowed down and looked about her. On the bank beside the road a man sat, and he was nursing an ugly yellow lurcher dog in his arms. “Missy!” the man called, and his voice was broken and harsh with suffering. It was Rundle, the poacher, and his dog, and there was blood on Rundle’s hand, blood trickling down from a wound in the dog’s side. The man was holding the dog as he might have held a child. The big ugly yellow head was against the man’s breast, and in its agony the dog was licking the man’s rough hand. And watching, there came back to Ellice’s memory what she had said of this man and his dog. “You’ll do something for me, missy, something as I—I can’t do myself!” He shuddered. “Will you ride on to Taylor’s and ask him to come here and bring—his gun?” “Why?” “I—I can’t do it myself!” “He might be cured.”