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into a land of little wooded glens and then to a great wide moorland

place, gleaming with lochs, with high blue hills showing northwards.

About five o'clock the carriage had emptied, and I was left alone

as I had hoped. I got out at the next station, a little place whose

name I scarcely noted, set right in the heart of a bog. It reminded

me of one of those forgotten little stations in the Karroo. An old

station-master was digging in his garden, and with his spade over

his shoulder sauntered to the train, took charge of a parcel, and

went back to his potatoes. A child of ten received my ticket, and I

emerged on a white road that straggled over the brown moor.

It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill showing as

clear as a cut amethyst. The air had the queer, rooty smell of bogs,

but it was as fresh as mid-ocean, and it had the strangest effect on

my spirits. I actually felt light-hearted. I might have been a boy out

for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirty-seven very

much wanted by the police. I felt just as I used to feel when I was

starting for a big trek on a frosty morning on the high veld. If you

believe me, I swung along that road whistling. There was no plan

of campaign in my head, only just to go on and on in this blessed,

honest-smelling hill country, for every mile put me in better humour

with myself.

In a roadside planting I cut a walking-stick of hazel, and presently

struck off the highway up a bypath which followed the glen of a

brawling stream. I reckoned that I was still far ahead of any pursuit,

and for that night might please myself. It was some hours since I

had tasted food, and I was getting very hungry when I came to a

herd's cottage set in a nook beside a waterfall. A brown-faced

woman was standing by the door, and greeted me with the kindly

shyness of moorland places. When I asked for a night's lodging she

said I was welcome to the 'bed in the loft', and very soon she set

before me a hearty meal of ham and eggs, scones, and thick sweet milk.

At the darkening her man came in from the hills, a lean giant,

who in one step covered as much ground as three paces of ordinary

mortals. They asked me no questions, for they had the perfect

breeding of all dwellers in the wilds, but I could see they set me

down as a kind of dealer, and I took some trouble to confirm their

view. I spoke a lot about cattle, of which my host knew little, and I

picked up from him a good deal about the local Galloway markets,

which I tucked away in my memory for future use. At ten I was

nodding in my chair, and the 'bed in the loft' received a weary man

who never opened his eyes till five o'clock set the little homestead

a-going once more.

They refused any payment, and by six I had breakfasted and was

striding southwards again. My notion was to return to the railway

line a station or two farther on than the place where I had alighted

yesterday and to double back. I reckoned that that was the safest

way, for the police would naturally assume that I was always making

farther from London in the direction of some western port. I

thought I had still a good bit of a start, for, as I reasoned, it would

take some hours to fix the blame on me, and several more to

identify the fellow who got on board the train at St Pancras.

it was the same jolly, clear spring weather, and I simply could

not contrive to feel careworn. Indeed I was in better spirits than I

had been for months. Over a long ridge of moorland I took my

road, skirting the side of a high hill which the herd had called

Cairnsmore of Fleet. Nesting curlews and plovers were crying everywhere,

and the links of green pasture by the streams were dotted

with young lambs. All the slackness of the past months was slipping

from my bones, and I stepped out like a four-year-old. By-and-by I

came to a swell of moorland which dipped to the vale of a little

river, and a mile away in the heather I saw the smoke of a train.

The station, when I reached it, proved to be ideal for my purpose.

The moor surged up around it and left room only for the single

line, the slender siding, a waiting-room, an office, the station-

master's cottage, and a tiny yard of gooseberries and sweet-william.

There seemed no road to it from anywhere, and to increase the

desolation the waves of a tarn lapped on their grey granite beach

half a mile away. I waited in the deep heather till I saw the smoke

of an east-going train on the horizon. Then I approached the tiny

booking-office and took a ticket for Dumfries.

The only occupants of the carriage were an old shepherd and his

dog - a wall-eyed brute that I mistrusted. The man was asleep, and

on the cushions beside him was that morning's SCOTSMAN. Eagerly I

seized on it, for I fancied it would tell me something.

There were two columns about the Portland Place Murder, as it

was called. My man Paddock had given the alarm and had the milkman

arrested. Poor devil, it looked as if the latter had earned his

sovereign hardly; but for me he had been cheap at the price, for he

seemed to have occupied the police for the better part of the day. In

the latest news I found a further instalment of the story. The milkman

had been released, I read, and the true criminal, about whose identity

the police were reticent, was believed to have got away from London

by one of the northern lines. There was a short note about me as the

owner of the flat. I guessed the police had stuck that in, as a clumsy

contrivance to persuade me that I was unsuspected.

There was nothing else in the paper, nothing about foreign

politics or Karolides, or the things that had interested Scudder. I

laid it down, and found that we were approaching the station at

which I had got out yesterday. The potato-digging station-master

had been gingered up into some activity, for the west-going train

was waiting to let us pass, and from it had descended three men

who were asking him questions. I supposed that they were the local

police, who had been stirred up by Scotland Yard, and had traced

me as far as this one-horse siding. Sitting well back in the shadow I

watched them carefully. One of them had a book, and took down

notes. The old potato-digger seemed to have turned peevish, but

the child who had collected my ticket was talking volubly. All the

party looked out across the moor where the white road departed. I

hoped they were going to take up my tracks there.

As we moved away from that station my companion woke up.

He fixed me with a wandering glance, kicked his dog viciously, and

inquired where he was. Clearly he was very drunk.

'That's what comes o' bein' a teetotaller,' he observed in bitter

regret.

I expressed my surprise that in him I should have met a blue-

ribbon stalwart.

'Ay, but I'm a strong teetotaller,' he said pugnaciously. 'I took

the pledge last Martinmas, and I havena touched a drop o' whisky

sinsyne. Not even at Hogmanay, though I was sair temptit.'

He swung his heels up on the seat, and burrowed a frowsy head

into the cushions.

'And that's a' I get,' he moaned. 'A heid hetter than hell fire, and

twae een lookin' different ways for the Sabbath.'

'What did it?' I asked.

'A drink they ca' brandy. Bein' a teetotaller I keepit off the

whisky, but I was nip-nippin' a' day at this brandy, and I doubt I'll

no be weel for a fortnicht.' His voice died away into a splutter, and

sleep once more laid its heavy hand on him.

My plan had been to get out at some station down the line, but

the train suddenly gave me a better chance, for it came to a standstill

at the end of a culvert which spanned a brawling porter-coloured

river. I looked out and saw that every carriage window was closed

and no human figure appeared in the landscape. So I opened the

door, and dropped quickly into the tangle of hazels which edged

the line.

it would have been all right but for that infernal dog. Under the

impression that I was decamping with its master's belongings, it

started to bark, and all but got me by the trousers. This woke up

the herd, who stood bawling at the carriage door in the belief that I

had committed suicide. I crawled through the thicket, reached the

edge of the stream, and in cover of the bushes put a hundred yards

or so behind me. Then from my shelter I peered back, and saw the

guard and several passengers gathered round the open carriage

door and staring in my direction. I could not have made a more

public departure if I had left with a bugler and a brass band.

Happily the drunken herd provided a diversion. He and his dog,

which was attached by a rope to his waist, suddenly cascaded out of

the carriage, landed on their heads on the track, and rolled some

way down the bank towards the water. In the rescue which followed

the dog bit somebody, for I could hear the sound of hard swearing.

Presently they had forgotten me, and when after a quarter of a

mile's crawl I ventured to look back, the train had started again and

was vanishing in the cutting.

I was in a wide semicircle of moorland, with the brown river as

radius, and the high hills forming the northern circumference. There

was not a sign or sound of a human being, only the plashing water

and the interminable crying of curlews. Yet, oddly enough, for the

first time I felt the terror of the hunted on me. It was not the police

that I thought of, but the other folk, who knew that I knew

Scudder's secret and dared not let me live. I was certain that they

would pursue me with a keenness and vigilance unknown to the

British law, and that once their grip closed on me I should find

no mercy.

I looked back, but there was nothing in the landscape. The sun

glinted on the metals of the line and the wet stones in the stream,

and you could not have found a more peaceful sight in the world.

Nevertheless I started to run. Crouching low in the runnels of the

bog, I ran till the sweat blinded my eyes. The mood did not leave

me till I had reached the rim of mountain and flung myself panting

on a ridge high above the young waters of the brown river.

From my vantage-ground I could scan the whole moor right

away to the railway line and to the south of it where green fields

took the place of heather. I have eyes like a hawk, but I could see

nothing moving in the whole countryside. Then I looked east

beyond the ridge and saw a new kind of landscape - shallow green

valleys with plentiful fir plantations and the faint lines of dust

which spoke of highroads. Last of all I looked into the blue May

sky, and there I saw that which set my pulses racing ...

Low down in the south a monoplane was climbing into the

heavens. I was as certain as if I had been told that that aeroplane

was looking for me, and that it did not belong to the police. For an

hour or two I watched it from a pit of heather. It flew low along

the hill-tops, and then in narrow circles over the valley up which I

had come' Then it seemed to change its mind, rose to a great

height, and flew away back to the south.

I did not like this espionage from the air, and I began to think

less well of the countryside I had chosen for a refuge. These

heather hills were no sort of cover if my enemies were in the sky,

and I must find a different kind of sanctuary. I looked with more

satisfaction to the green country beyond the ridge, for there I

should find woods and stone houses.

About six in the evening I came out of the moorland to a white

ribbon of road which wound up the narrow vale of a lowland

stream. As I followed it, fields gave place to bent, the glen became

a plateau, and presently I had reached a kind of pass where a

solitary house smoked in the twilight. The road swung over a

bridge, and leaning on the parapet was a young man.

He was smoking a long clay pipe and studying the water with

spectacled eyes. In his left hand was a small book with a finger

marking the place. Slowly he repeated -

As when a Gryphon through the wilderness

With winged step, o'er hill and moory dale

Pursues the Arimaspian.

He jumped round as my step rung on the keystone, and I saw a

pleasant sunburnt boyish face.

'Good evening to you,' he said gravely. 'It's a fine night for

the road.'

The smell of peat smoke and of some savoury roast floated to me

from the house.

'Is that place an inn?' I asked.

'At your service,' he said politely. 'I am the landlord, Sir, and I

hope you will stay the night, for to tell you the truth I have had no

company for a week.'

I pulled myself up on the parapet of the bridge and filled my

pipe. I began to detect an ally.

'You're young to be an innkeeper,' I said.

'My father died a year ago and left me the business. I live there

with my grandmother. It's a slow job for a young man, and it

wasn't my choice of profession.'

'Which was?'

He actually blushed. 'I want to write books,' he said.

'And what better chance could you ask?' I cried. 'Man, I've often

thought that an innkeeper would make the best story-teller in the world.'

'Not now,' he said eagerly. 'Maybe in the old days when you had

pilgrims and ballad-makers and highwaymen and mail-coaches on

the road. But not now. Nothing comes here but motor-cars full of

fat women, who stop for lunch, and a fisherman or two in the

spring, and the shooting tenants in August. There is not much

material to be got out of that. I want to see life, to travel the world,

and write things like Kipling and Conrad. But the most I've done

yet is to get some verses printed in CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL.'

I looked at the inn standing golden in the sunset against the

brown hills.

'I've knocked a bit about the world, and I wouldn't despise such

a hermitage. D'you think that adventure is found only in the tropics