The pleasant old lady had appeared in the doorway. She curtseyed with a smile to Mr. Holmes, but glanced with some apprehension at the figure upon the sofa.

“It is all right, Martha. He has not been hurt at all.”

“I am glad of that, Mr. Holmes. According to his lights he has been a kind master. He wanted me to go with his wife to Germany yesterday, but that would hardly have suited your plans, would it, sir?”

“No, indeed, Martha. So long as you were here I was easy in my mind. We waited some time for your signal to-night.”

“It was the secretary, sir.”

“I know. His car passed ours.”

“I thought he would never go. I knew that it would not suit your plans, sir, to find him here.”

“No, indeed. Well, it only meant that we waited half an hour or so until I saw your lamp go out and knew that the coast was clear. You can report to me to-morrow in London, Martha, at Claridge’s Hotel.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I suppose you have everything ready to leave.”

“Yes, sir. He posted seven letters to-day. I have the addresses as usual.”

“Very good, Martha. I will look into them to-morrow. Goodnight. These papers,” he continued as the old lady vanished, “are not of of very great importance, for, of course, the information which they represent has been sent off long ago to the German government. These are the originals which could not safely be got out of the country.”

“Then they are of no use.”

“I should not go so far as to say that, Watson. They will at least show our people what is known and what is not. I may say that a good many of these papers have come through me, and I need not add are thoroughly untrustworthy. It would brighten my declining years to see a German cruiser navigating the Solent according to the mine-field plans which I have furnished. But you, Watson” — he stopped his work and took his old friend by the shoulders — “I’ve hardly seen you in the light yet. How have the years used you? You look the same blithe boy as ever. ”

“I feel twenty years younger, Holmes. I have seldom felt so happy as when I got your wire asking me to meet you at Harwich with the car. But you, Holmes — you have changed very little — save for that horrible goatee.”

“These are the sacrifices one makes for one’s country, Watson,” said Holmes, pulling at his little tuft. “To-morrow it will be but a dreadful memory. With my hair cut and a few other superficial changes I shall no doubt reappear at Claridge’s tomorrow as I was before this American stunt — I beg your pardon, Watson, my well of English seems to be permanently defiled — before this American job came my way.”

“But you have retired, Holmes. We heard of you as living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs.”

“Exactly, Watson. Here is the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of my latter years!” He picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen. “Alone I did it. Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London.”

On one of her bad days she went out alone to walk in the wood, ponderously, heeding nothing, not even noticing where she was. The report of a gun not far off startled and angered her.

Then, as she went, she heard voices, and recoiled. People! She didn’t want people. But her quick ear caught another sound, and she roused; it was a child sobbing. At once she attended; someone was ill–treating a child. She strode swinging down the wet drive, her sullen resentment uppermost. She felt just prepared to make a scene.

Turning the corner, she saw two figures in the drive beyond her: the keeper, and a little girl in a purple coat and moleskin cap, crying.

‘Ah, shut it up, tha false little bitch!’ came the man’s angry voice, and the child sobbed louder.

Constance strode nearer, with blazing eyes. The man turned and looked at her, saluting coolly, but he was pale with anger.

‘What’s the matter? Why is she crying?’ demanded Constance, peremptory but a little breathless.

A faint smile like a sneer came on the man’s face. ‘Nay, yo mun ax ‘er,’ he replied callously, in broad vernacular.

Connie felt as if he had hit her in the face, and she changed colour. Then she gathered her defiance, and looked at him, her dark blue eyes blazing rather vaguely.

‘I asked YOU,’ she panted.

He gave a queer little bow, lifting his hat. ‘You did, your Ladyship,’ he said; then, with a return to the vernacular: ‘but I canna tell yer.’ And he became a soldier, inscrutable, only pale with annoyance.

Connie turned to the child, a ruddy, black–haired thing of nine or ten. ‘What is it, dear? Tell me why you’re crying!’ she said, with the conventionalized sweetness suitable. More violent sobs, self–conscious. Still more sweetness on Connie’s part.

‘There, there, don’t you cry! Tell me what they’ve done to you!’...an intense tenderness of tone. At the same time she felt in the pocket of her knitted jacket, and luckily found a sixpence.

‘Don’t you cry then!’ she said, bending in front of the child. ‘See what I’ve got for you!’

Sobs, snuffles, a fist taken from a blubbered face, and a black shrewd eye cast for a second on the sixpence. Then more sobs, but subduing. ‘There, tell me what’s the matter, tell me!’ said Connie, putting the coin into the child’s chubby hand, which closed over it.

‘It’s the...it’s the...pussy!’

Shudders of subsiding sobs.

‘What pussy, dear?’

After a silence the shy fist, clenching on sixpence, pointed into the bramble brake.

‘There!’

Connie looked, and there, sure enough, was a big black cat, stretched out grimly, with a bit of blood on it.

‘Oh!’ she said in repulsion.

‘A poacher, your Ladyship,’ said the man satirically.

She glanced at him angrily. ‘No wonder the child cried,’ she said, ‘if you shot it when she was there. No wonder she cried!’