"Good-bye," she said, very low.

He wrung her hand, and, releasing it abruptly, lifted his hat and
disappeared amid the throng of people on the platform. And it was not
until the train had steamed out of the station again that she remembered
that she did not even know his name.

Very slowly she unknotted the handkerchief from about her arm, and laying
the blood-stained square of linen on her knee, proceeded to examine each
corner carefully. In one of them she found the initials M.E., very
finely worked.




CHAPTER IV

CRAILING RECTORY

The early morning mist still lingered in the valleys and clung about
the river banks as the Reverend Alan Stair, returning from his
matutinal dip in the sea, swung up the lane and pushed open the door
giving access from it to the Rectory grounds. The little wooden door,
painted green and overhung with ivy, was never bolted. In the
primitive Devon village of Crailing such a precaution would have been
deemed entirely superfluous; indeed, the locking of the door would
probably have been regarded by the villagers as equivalent to a
reflection on their honesty, and should the passage of time ultimately
bring to the ancient rectory a fresh parson, obsessed by conventional