A Damsel in Distress

And so it came about that when, after a vigil that seemed to last

for a lifetime, Percy heard the key turn in the lock and burst

forth seeking whom he might devour, he experienced an almost

instant quieting of his excited nervous system. Confronting him was

a vast man whose muscles, like those of that other and more

celebrated village blacksmith, were plainly as strong as iron

bands.

This man eyed Percy with a chilly eye.

"Well," he said. "What's troublin' you?"

Percy gulped. The man's mere appearance was a sedative.

"Er--nothing!" he replied. "Nothing!"

"There better hadn't be!" said the man darkly. "Mr. Ferguson give

me this to give to you. Take it!"

Percy took it. It was a shilling.

"And this."

The second gift was a small paper pamphlet. It was entitled "Now's

the Time!" and seemed to be a story of some kind. At any rate,

Percy's eyes, before they began to swim in a manner that prevented

steady reading, caught the words "Job Roberts had always been a

hard-drinking man, but one day, as he was coming out of the

bar-parlour . . ." He was about to hurl it from him, when he met

the other's eye and desisted. Rarely had Lord Belpher encountered a

man with a more speaking eye.

"And now you get along," said the man. "You pop off. And I'm going

to watch you do it, too. And, if I find you sneakin' off to the

Three Pigeons . . ."

His pause was more eloquent than his speech and nearly as eloquent

as his eye. Lord Belpher tucked the tract into his sweater,

pocketed the shilling, and left the house. For nearly a mile down

the well-remembered highway he was aware of a Presence in his rear,

but he continued on his way without a glance behind.

"Like one that on a lonely road

Doth walk in fear and dread;

And, having once looked back, walks on

And turns no more his head!

Because he knows a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread!"

Maud made her way across the fields to the cottage down by Platt's.

Her heart was as light as the breeze that ruffled the green hedges.

Gaily she tripped towards the cottage door. Her hand was just

raised to knock, when from within came the sound of a well-known

voice.

She had reached her goal, but her father had anticipated her. Lord

Marshmoreton had selected the same moment as herself for paying a

call upon George Bevan.

Maud tiptoed away, and hurried back to the castle. Never before had

she so clearly realized what a handicap an adhesive family can be

to a young girl.