"Oh, it is you--it is you again, Mr. Cleek?" said Ailsa with something
between a laugh and a sigh of relief as she recognized him.

"Yes, it is I. I have been behind you ever since you left the house in
Bardon Road. It was rash of you to cross the heath at this time and in
this weather. I rather fancied that something of this kind would be
likely to happen, and so took the liberty of following you."

"Then it was you I heard behind me?"

"It was I--yes. I shouldn't have intruded myself upon your notice if you
hadn't called out. A moment, please. Let's have a look at this young
highwayman, who so freely advertises himself as an amateur."

The light spat full into the gaunt, starved face of the young man and
made it stare forth doubly ghastly. He had made no effort to get away
from the very first. Perhaps he understood the uselessness of it, with
that strong hand gripped on his ragged neckband. Perhaps he was, in his
way, something of a fatalist--London breeds so many among such as he:
starved things that find every boat chained, every effort thrust back
upon them unrewarded. At any rate, from the moment he had heard the girl
give to this man a name which every soul in England had heard at one
time or another during the past two years, he had gone into a sort of
mild collapse, as though realising the utter uselessness of battling
against fate, and had given himself up to what was to be.

"Hello," said Cleek, as he looked the youth over. "Yours is a face I
don't remember running foul of before, my young beauty. Where did you
come from?"