At the very end of the street, and exactly opposite to the small house from whose garden the poplars rose, there stood an inn. It was on the edge of the hill, for just beyond the road dipped steeply down between high hedges of brambles and elder trees, and, turning at the bottom of the incline, wound thence through woods and level meadows towards Leicester. It was the old coach road, and the great paved yard of the inn and the long line of disused stables had once been noisy with the shouts of ostlers and the crack of whips. Now only the carrier's cart drove twice a week down the steep road to Leicester, and a faint whistle from the low-lying land and a trail of smoke showed where now the traffic ran. On the platform of the little roadside station, three miles from the village, Pamela met Alan Warrisden on the morning after she had sent off her telegram. She had a trap waiting at the door, and as they mounted into it she said-- "I rode over to the village this morning and hired this dog-cart at the inn. I am not expected to be back at Whitewebs until the afternoon; so I thought we might lunch at the inn, and then a man can drive you back to the station, while I ride home again." "It was bad going for a horse, wasn't it?" said Warrisden. The thaw had fairly set in; the roads, still hard as cement, ran with water, and were most slippery. On each side patches of snow hung upon the banks half melted, and the air was raw. "Yes, it was bad going," Pamela admitted. "But I could not wait. It was necessary that I should see you to-day." She said no more at the moment, and Warrisden was content to sit by her side as she drove, and wait. The road ran in a broad straight line over the sloping ground. There was no vehicle, not even another person, moving along it. Warrisden could see the line of houses ahead, huddled against the sky, the spire of a church, and on his right the three sentinel poplars. He was to see them all that afternoon. Pamela drove straight to the inn, where she had already ordered luncheon; and it was not until luncheon was over that she drew up her chair to the fire and spoke. "Won't you smoke?" she said first of all. "I want you to listen to me." Warrisden lit a pipe and listened. "It is right that I should be very frank with you," she went on, "for I am going to ask you to help me." "You need me, then?" said Warrisden. There was a leap in his voice which brought the colour to her cheeks. "Very much," she said; and, with a smile, she asked, "Are you glad?" "Yes," he answered simply. "Yet the help may be difficult for you to give. It may occupy a long time besides. I am not asking you for a mere hour or a day." The warning only brought a smile to Warrisden's face. "I don't think you understand," he said, "how much one wants to be needed by those one needs."