“Yes, Mrs. Lorraine, it is indeed. May I ask if it would be possible to get your daughter within half an hour?” Mrs. Lorraine feared not. Miss Penny made an excuse and went out. As Mr. Langley resumed his chair, Mrs. Lorraine turned to him despairingly. “I haven’t the slightest idea where Alice is, Mr. Langley. She left the house an hour ago. Anna and Rusty Miller came over just as we were finishing dinner, and when we looked for Alice she was not to be found.” “May I ask if she went in the direction of Farleigh?” “I hardly think she did, Mr. Langley. As a matter of fact, she practically always starts out in that direction, but I do not think she did to-day for if she had we should have seen her. Miss Penny and I both happened to be where we saw everyone who passed over that way for half an hour before we discovered she wasn’t in the house.” “Then I shall have to trouble you, Mrs. Lorraine,” he said gravely. “I am sorry. I would spare you if I could, but even if I had seen Miss Lorraine first, you would have had to know presently. May I ask you, in the first place, whether you have allowed anyone to occupy the cottage in the lane since you and your daughter have been at Miss Penny’s?” “O no, Mr. Langley,” she declared so decisively that he frowned unconsciously. “We might as well have given it up, only Alice thought we should keep it until after Christmas. I suppose----” But she could not go on. His expression disconcerted her. “And the little building in the rear that is called the shop?” he asked. “We never used that, anyhow,--never even looked into it, though I believe we have the key.” He picked up his gloves and looked inside as if to determine the size. Then he looked at her. “Three men came to me this noon about a matter that has been troubling the village for some little time and which now seems to them to be approaching a crisis,” he began. “This is the situation, Mrs. Lorraine. There has been a strange man around for--it must be upwards of three weeks now. One person and another has caught sight of him at night, and he seems to have looked into the windows of nearly every house in Farleigh. It may be imagination in some cases, but before I had heard anything about the stranger, I felt quite sure one night that there was someone peering in at my study window, and I certainly saw someone slink away from another window at the parsonage about a fortnight since. Someone saw the figure of a man pass across the window in the organ loft at the church one Sunday afternoon, and there have been other similar things--not of great moment when taken separately but which collectively seem to these men and others to constitute a menace to public safety.” “But Mr. Langley, what has that to do with my--with the cottage in the lane?” she enquired with a sharp note of pain in her voice.