"I am perfectly serious," Geoffrey said, with a smile. "Not that it is any laughing matter. Dear grandfather, there is a great danger in the house. I don't know what it is, but Uncle Ralph knows, and he has never been wrong yet. It was he who found out all about those dreadful flowers. And he wants the house cleared till dark. Unless we do so, the morning will assuredly see the end of one or more of us." "Is it a painless death?" the old man asked grimly. "If it is, I prefer to remain here." "But there is always hope," Geoffrey pleaded. "And you always thinks of us. Won't you do this thing? Won't you say that it is a sudden whim of yours? Mind, everybody is to go, everybody but Uncle Ralph. I shall ride and when I have ridden some distance I shall pretend to have forgotten something. Perhaps you deem me unduly foolish. But I implore you to do this thing." Rupert Ravenspur hesitated no longer. He always found it hard to resist that young smiling handsome face. Not that he was blind to the folly of the proceedings. On his own initiative he would as soon have danced a hornpipe in the hall. "I will go and see about it at once," he said. He had put off his somber air, and assumed a kind of ill-fitting gayety. Gordon Ravenspur and his wife received the suggestion with becoming resignation. To them it was the first signs of a mind breaking down under an intolerable strain. Vera and Marion professed themselves to be delighted. "It sounds odd," said the latter. "Fancy the doomed and fated Ravenspurs going on a picnic! And fancy the suggestion, too, coming from grandfather!" Vera looked anxious. "You don't imagine," she said, "that his mind----" "Oh, his mind is all right. You can see that from his face. But I expect that the strain is telling on him, and that he wants to get out of himself for a time. Personally, I regard the idea as charming." The preparations were made, no great matter in so large and well-regulated an establishment as Ravenspur Castle. If the servants were astonished, they said nothing. The stolid coachman sat solemnly on the box of the wagonette; the demure footman touched his hat as he put up the step with the air of a man who is accustomed to do this sort of thing every day. Geoffrey stood under the big portico and waved his hand. "You should drive with us," Marion cried. "And you won't be long?" Vera asked. "Oh, I am duly impressed with the importance of the occasion," Geoffrey laughed. "My horse will get there almost as soon as you arrive. Call the spaniel." Tut, the pet spaniel, was called, but no response was made, and finally the party drove off without him. Geoffrey watched the wagonette with a strange sense of unreality upon him. He felt that he could have scoffed at a situation like this in the pages of a novel. And yet it is the truth that is always so improbable.