tentacles of some green cuttlefish. Anything would serve,
however, that was likely to confuse their trail, so they both
decided without need of words to use this tree also as a
ladder--a ladder of descent. When they dropped from the lowest
branch to the ground their stockinged feet felt hard gravel
beneath them.

They had alighted in the middle of a very broad garden path, and
the clearing mist permitted them to see the edge of a
well-clipped lawn. Though the white vapour was still a veil, it
was like the gauzy veil of a transformation scene in a pantomime;
for through it there glowed shapeless masses of colour, masses
which might be clouds of sunrise or mosaics of gold and crimson,
or ladies robed in ruby and emerald draperies. As it thinned yet
farther they saw that it was only flowers; but flowers in such
insolent mass and magnificence as can seldom be seen out of the
tropics. Purple and crimson rhododendrons rose arrogantly, like
rampant heraldic animals against their burning background of
laburnum gold. The roses were red hot; the clematis was, so to
speak, blue hot. And yet the mere whiteness of the syringa seemed
the most violent colour of all. As the golden sunlight gradually
conquered the mists, it had really something of the sensational
sweetness of the slow opening of the gates of Eden. MacIan, whose
mind was always haunted with such seraphic or titanic parallels,
made some such remark to his companion. But Turnbull only cursed
and said that it was the back garden of some damnable rich man.

When the last haze had faded from the ordered paths, the open
lawns, and the flaming flower-beds, the two realized, not without
an abrupt re-examination of their position, that they were not