ROMANCE IN A WINDMILL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21248, 30 July 1932, Page 12 (Supplement)

ROMANCE IN A WINDMILL

SYNOPSIS Peggie Summerleigh'a father, one of the leading professors in mechanical engineering, goes abroad for a holiday rendered iieceaßary by a recent illness. Peggie, to obtain the necessary funds to cover orpenses during the time he la away, has. unknown to her father, taken a situation us maid-companion to Joan Fletcher, an old school friend, who is at p/esent living with her mother in a windmill, which has been left to Mrs. Fletcher by her father. Once nettled, they find the Windmill involved in a mysterious plot, flume unknown person has fitted a Bteel door shutting off the top storey, find they are continually being pestered by a man calling himself Captain Browne, who is for ever trying to worm his way to the top They break open the steel doer, but _ find nothing. Things come to such a pitch that Mrs. Fletcher feels they must have assistance, and determines to appeal to Francis Richardson, whom she has heard of as beinsr the most reliable, efficient and daring solicitor in London. That gentleman sends Nigel Armitage to interview her, telling him to introduce himself as Francis Richardson. It is not the first tune the eolicito:; has exchanged identities temporarily with his head clerk. Mrsi. Fletcher etarts to relate her story to Nigel. CHAPTER ll.—(Continued) Nigel Armitage puckered his brows in perplexity. This part of the story did not sound to him convincing. He could hardly believe the grey-haired lady had killed a man bo easily, unless the man ■were already suffering from heart disease. " We did everything we could think of jfco bring the man round," she went on, and, when we could not got the faintest eign of consciousness, I locked up the mill and we got the car out and went for a doctor and a policeman. Luckily, we found an inspector at the police station who was very kind and came with us immediately. I told him and the doctor exactly what had occurred. By that time I was feeling rather sick. It is awful to think you may have killed a fellow creature. When we reached the mill I gave tLe inspector my key and told him to go in and view the corpse. I felt I could not go in first." She paused. «' Well ?" queried Nigel Armitage. _ " It wasn't well. It wasn't at all well," she answered ruefully. " You see when the inspector did go in with the doctor he found nothing there. I had fetched them both for nothing. There was no corps© to yiew." //"What do you mean! exclaimed Nigel. ; i, •. " Just what I say," returned Mrs. Fletcher, mournfully. " The corpse had vanished." The young man who had introduced himself to Mrs. Fletcher as the solicitor, Francis Richardson,' gazed at her as though he thought she had taken leave of her senses. . "Do you mind saying that again I he asked. " Certainly," responded Mrs. Fletcher, obligingly. " When the inspector of police (whom I fetched to see the man 1 had left lying—seemingly dead—in the Windmill), went inside to view the corpse the corpse had vanished." " The man could not have been dead," said Nigel Armitage firmly. " No, I agree with you so far. He evidently knocked himself senseless on the corner of the fender, so as to have all the appearance of a dead man—at least to throe'frightened women. But I think and hops that, while we were away fetching the police inspector, he recovered consciousness." " And walked out," concluded Nigel, with an air of settling the whole matter. "You forget that we had locked him inside the mill, and had taken the key jWith us." "Wasn't there another door?"

" It, certainly is not." he agreed. " You see, poor Joni: and I have not the least inkling of what tho man really wanted, so it is most agitating.' If it was part of some plot, another attempt to get to the top room of the mill may be made any day. Surely to goodness you can leave your office for a day or two at least ? Haven't you a head clerk you can trust ? We could run you up in the car as often as you wished. Or the train service is not so bad, when once one has covered the five miles from the mill to the station. You must come. Mr. Richarl- - son." Armitage thought quickly. " If you don't mind waiting here a little while, I'll see whether it can be managed," he conceded. He passed through the clerk's oflice and asked young Travcrs to forego his tea still longer. Travcrs was injured, but not surprised. His work with Richardson not infrequently demanded overtime. 'He knew better than to argue. Armitage, grabbing his hat, set off quickly down the street. A turn to the left; another turn to the right: a dive down a narrow and unsavoury alley; and he entered tho queer little restaurant known to its patrons as " The Tea Kettle.' It was a poor travesty of Home set down in the midst of offices and warehouses. The long chilly room was inadequately warmed by p. log fire! Candles with 'orna mental shades flickered sadly on every table. Home-made cakes abounded. And black cats prowled about the room, cadging scraps. It was not altogether an attractive place for the general, public. But, in the cosiest corner close to the fire, Armitage found his employer sprawling comfortably in an easy chair, and re galing himself with hot muffins. He blinked irritably at the head clerk, who placidly pulled up another chair and proceeded to relate, as briefly as he could, the sensational story of the Windmill. A stranger, looking at Francis Richard son as he blinked nervously over his teacup, would be inclined to bracket him as a frail, irritable, elderly gentleman—baldheaded, inconsequential, and incompetent. Nigel Armitage, however, had learned thafc his employer's razor-edged intellect never worked so keenly as when he looked utterly and completely imbecile. " Go with the woman," were the orders .he received at tho end of his report. " Look out for yourself, you know. You know nothing about her, except what she has told you, and there is no time to verify her statements, she may make a regular habit of knocking men on the head, for all the information you have to the contrary. Still—from what you tell me, and from the glimpse I had of her through the window— I think she is straight. This case may sharpen your addled brains a trifle." " You really wish me to go with her, sir ?" asked Armitage, passing over the reflection on his brains. " Haven't I just said so ? How many more times do you want me to repeat myself?" " Aren't you overlooking the difficulty that Mrs. Fletcher thinks that I am you, sir ?" " Do you take me for as big as a booby as yourself? 0/ course she thinks you are me. It is because she does that she lias asked you tc go down to the Mill. That's all right. I am most decidedly not going to be mixed up in a roughhouse in a windmill. I have too much respect for my skin* You are quite at liberty to decline to go, if you like, but —you being made the way you arc—l should imagine you would rather enjoy it." " But sir, won't tho fact of my going there as Francis Richardson be likely to cause complications 1" " If so, and if your unaided brain cannot cope with the complications, you can always say you have business at the office. Then wo can wrestle with the case together. I should like very much to keep in touch with it. In its own way it is unique." " Yes, sir." "Heavens, Armitage! How much longer are you going to sit there gaping at me like a stuffed trout? Are you going to take on this problem of the Windmill, or are you not I" " I'm jolly well going to take it on, sir," answered Nigel, with decision. " If I looked like a stuffed trout, I am sorry. It must have been the unaccustomed exercise of thinking. I am going off to night with Mrs. Fletcher. Have you any further instructions to give me?" " Yes, I have. As you go out, don't on any account omit to tell that girl with the fuzzy hair (who is telling the girl by the door all about her young man), to bring me another muffin, and to put some more logs on this miserable fire. It is nearly out," complained Mr. Francis Richardson.

" There was one at the side —but it jwas locked, and the key had been lost for years." " Then, of course, the fellow hopped put-of a. window." " I hardly think he could have done that. Only a small pane of each of the four downstairs windows is made to open. The old millers were very careful of their cJrri, you know. No robber could possibly have climbed through any of the windows." Great Scott! Then the burglar must have gone upstairs and hidden himself somewhere." " The inspector looked inside and out. upstairs and downstairs, in every corner and cupboard." Nigel Armitage sat forward in his chair, bis Qhin resting upon his lightly-clasped fingers, Ms elbows on tho" desk. He was entirely absorbed by the grey-haired lady and her astounding storyj which she was telling in as matter-of-fact and unemotional/a tone as though she were chatting of a shopping expedition. "Do you mean to assert," he said slowly, " that you locked in a windmill, from which there was no exit, a man who was badly injured, and when you came back he was gone? It is impossible." " Few things are really impossible. Besides- the. inspector found plenty of signs corroborating my statement. There were the man's footprints in the mud by the door, and the marks of the struggle when he pushed his way inside. There were the bruises left by a man's fingers on my daughter's wrists. And, of course. Joan told her side of the tale —how the man had been determined to get to the top of the windmill before Peggie and I came hack, and how—when Joan blocked his way tried to swing her to one side. When that did not succeed, he tried to kiss her, no doubt arguing that a girl like Joan would be sure to spring away from him. and so leave the way clear to the stairs. . . . But Joan did not spring baick. She fought. . . . Then, I came in, and the inspector could see my footprints and thoso of Peggie and the two dogs. Tho dogs were left on tho doorstep, which was just as well, for if they had seen the man attack Joan they'd have tried to eat him up. . . . There was an overturned chair, and a nast.v pool of blood by the fender, so there ~were 6igns enough to amuse the inspector and save my character as a teller cf tules." Nigel Armitage rumpled up his hair—a habit of his when he was engrossed. // Good Lord, what a sot-out!" ho exclaimed. " What exactly do you want me to dc, Mrs. Fletcher?" " That depends," replied Mrs. Fletcher. " upon what you will do. The fact is— I'm not afraid of difficulties and I love a fight, but tho dice seem to be weighted against me just lit the moment, and I must consider my daughter's' interests as well >as my own. Tho worrying part of the whole- affair in that we are completely in the dark. Tho Windmill, and ourselves as long as we inhabit the Windmill, seem to be involved in some plot, of the very nature, of which wo aro ignorant. Besides sill this, I may be indicted lor manslaughter at any moment! So I feel thero certainly oucrht to be someone working upon our side, who would stand by my daughter in such an emergency, and, anyway, would help us to unravel this tangle." "I'd Iwe to do it!" cried Armitage, rather unguardedly, reflecting immediately afterwards that he was not Mr. Francis Eichardscn and had no right to have listened to the story at all. if only the grey-rhaireid lady had known. " Some time ago," she said, " I con Suited an old friend of my husband's as to would be the very best man-of-law to go to in an emergency. He said that Francis Richardson was the most reliable, and most efficient, and the most darintr, solicitor in • London. So here I am, Mr. Richardson, and I want to beg sou to come back with mo to tho milf Name your own feo. Only come." Armitage, whose hair was by this time ft perfect disgrace to any solicitor, looked Embarrassed. " I am afraid—" he was beginning. cut/<Bhe would not let him finish. Goodness gracious me, man, surely you won t refuse! You can't. It is not Oiten you are likely to be asked to help ta an emergency like this, is it?"

, CHAPTER m. THE WINDMILL The Windmill stood sharply defined igainst the sky, and was some distance from the villages on either side of it, so thai; locally it was often known as the Lone Windmill. The nearest village was East Bramliling. From here, the road sloped steeply upwards for about a mile, semi-cultivated grazing land on one side of it, and on the other tfle salt 1 , Marshes and the sea. All the way, the Windmill towered over tho landscape. When the skies were dull and overcast, it was a luminous grey; when the sky was sunlit, it was dark and grim; but it showed best of all when powdered lightly with snow or frost, when it looked like some great giant's fairy toy. Always, in all seasons, it was an arresting spectacle. For how many years had that old mill stood sturdily defying the gales? It was like a beautiful woman, who kept its age a secret, but stood there undefeated and gracious in its strength, e Little wonder that Joan Fletcher loved it from the first moment her mother—most unwillingly—had brought her to see it. Inside, there was one room on each floor, and thero were six floors, or storeys. Each room was circular; each was somewhat smaller than tho one below it; each had four windows looking north, south, east and west, and, naturally, tho higher one climbed tho more mangnificent became the wide views, especially toward the east, whore was the sea. The only means of getting from storey, to storey was by rough stairways, little better than step-ladders, which led from each room into the room above it, through a square aperture which could be closed at will by a heavy trap-door. The first floor had a balcony running round it, on to which a glass door opened, but this was too high above the ground for a man to jump down, and there was no means of climbing, so it provided no solution to the mystery,-of tho vanished man. Securely rivetted on to the floor of the very top storey of all was a hinged sheet of steel, forming, when down, an impas sablo barrier across the top stairway. It was plainly of recent manufacture. By whom could it have been introduced during the period when the mill was untenated ? That a certain Captain Browne was as much interested in this problem as the Flotchers was proved by his calling upon them tho very first day they arrived, while men wera actually at work breaking open tho steel door. " Pray forgive my intrusion," he began affably, as soon as he had introduced himself," but do lot me help you. Can I get you lunch, or anything! In a village, one should make a practice of- being neighbourly, don't you think T" " Thank you vory much, but we are returning to town for lunch," replied Mrs. Fletcher, heartily wishing Captain Percival Browne back at tho Cat and Fiddle, where he was staying. His call, just now, was an interruption, especially when a muffled clang from overhead, reminded

By CAMILLA CARLISLE Author of " Sllverthorne," " Mysterious Mr. Nicholson." etc,

THRILLING NEW SERIAL OF LOVE AND ADVENTURE

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her thai thrilling secrets might be in process of discovery. The culler heard that clang, too. He sat up and cocked an inquiring eyebrow, but Mrs. 1' lc teller ignored the eyebrow. " Do let roe help you, if you have any furniture to he adjusted," he begged. " I always think house-moving is so charming." " I don't even know yet whether we are coming here to stay," returned Mrs. Fletcher, rather coldly. "We just ran down to have a look over the old place, which belonged, as you have perhaps heard, to my father." Tlio captain bowed, and smiled affably at Joan. His manner was frankness personified; his appearance most attractive. It was, therefore, unreasonable of Peggie Summerleigh to dislike him on sight. Joan, on the other hand, seemed somewhat disarmed by his languishing glances. " We have not got to the stage of requiring any help, yet," she told hini. " There are some men upstairs—" _ " Fixing one end of a wireless aerial, Peggie concluded quickly. Joan stared. Happily, Captain Browne had turned to Peggie when she spoke, and so missed Joan's look of bewilderment. " At least," went on Peggie, inventing as she talked, " they are driving in a sort of staple thing to which—if we do come and stay here —we can fasten our aerial. Are you keen on wireless, Captain Browne ?" " Fairly so. Fairly so. I've become rather tired of it," drawled the captain. It was obvious to Peggie that ho only half believed her, and that, beneath his languid manner, he was consumed by curiosity to know what was going on upstairs. For that matter, Peggie was consumed by curiosity also, and she knew that Joan was. But she was quite sure that Mrs. Fletcher was no more inclined than herself to take the caller into their confidence. Indeed, Mrs. Fletcher now took a firm hold of the conversation, entertaining the visitor with polite, but chilly, small talk, until at last he rose to go. Some impulse held Peggie back, when Mrs. Fletcher and Joan went with him to the door. She then saw that he had dropped a glove under his chair. She was about to run after him with it, when she changed her mind," and decided instead to wait and see what he was going to do. He did not keep her long in doubt. Having cleverly succeeded in beguiling the two ladies to the bottom of the drive with him, ho managed to double quickly back on the far side of a thick hedge. Through this he pushed his way, and was again inside the mill, while Mrs. Fletcher and Joan were yet some yards from the door. Peggie watched this manoeuvre with fascinated interest from a window of the first floor. His hurried footsteps on the ladder informed her that it was his intention to push right up to the top of the mill, before the ladies found him. She wondered what excuse he would make, when ho was found. Noiselessly as a kitten, Peggie sped on up three more flights of steps, and gently lowered the wooden door which barricaded these steps. She eased the bolt into its socket, and strengthened the barricade by sitting on it. Captain Browne, rushing up rather blindly, knocked his head against the wooden door and swore. He then shoved against it vigorously, but Peggie's weight and the rusty bolt between them resisted his attack. Perforce, he turned back, baffled. " The most extraordinary thing happened," Peggie heard him explaining to Mrs. Fletcher, in his throaty tenor, as she crept softly down again. " I had no sooner parted from you, dear lady, than I found I had only one glove. A disaster, was it not ? One glove is as useless as one boot. So, I hastened back through a gap in the hedge, to see if I had left it here—and here it is under the chair—and then, I felt sure I heard a cry for assistance upstairs. So I was running to see what was the matter. Perhaps the other young lady, whose name I did not. catch, may have hurt herself. I have heard that there is sometimes danger in these old mills. Do let us go and see." He was actually about to lead a rescue partv up the stepladder -when Feggie ran down it. " It's awfully kind of you, but I a,n quite all right, thank you, Captain Browne. I was playing with the dogs and gave a squeal without thinking. I am so sorry I alarmed you," she told him very sweetly. Captain Browne, who knew that he had invented that cry for help, looked at Peggie very thoughtfully. She handed him his glove. " What a mercy it is safe here," she ejaculated earnestly. " One glove is so useless." He might have instructed her in the ancient use to which one glove was sometimes put, but perhaps he knew that in this she needed no instruction. Between Peggie and Captain Browne there already lay the gage of battle. And, after all, there was nothing behind the steel door.

CHAPTER IV RUNNING AWAY WITH JOAN When Mrs. Fletcher went to London to fiee Mr. Francis Richardson, she left Joan and Peggie in the mill, under solemn promise not to go out until her return, and to keep the door locked and boltod. They had also the two dogs to guard them, but —spite of these precautions— Mrs. Fletcher was not happy in having to leave them. They had no disturbances until late afternoon when a telegram arrived for Joan. " Mrs. Fletcher hurt in street accident. Sending car for you," was all it said. Both girls immediately became flurried and anxious. " It doesn't say how badly, or where it happened, or anything we want to know," moaned Joan. " Why will people bo so horribly economical with important tolcgrams ?" "Do you think it is genuine?" asked Peggie, Joan stared. " Whyever should it not be genuine ? I only wish I could think it wasn't. Poor darling mums! Oh, why didn't they put how badly sho was hurt?" Joan's question remained unanswered for two hours and ten minutes, at tho end of which time a big, grey car hummed to a standstill at the gate leading to tho mill, and a stumpy man in chauffeur's livery brought Joan a note. Beckoning Peggie to read over her shoulder, Peggie perused the note as follows : Dear Joan,—l had a slight spill on tho way home and was taken to a cottago hospital. J't is nothing serious, but I should bo glad if you could como arid see me, dear. I am aending a car for you. Please ask Peggie to cycle over to Dr. Dawson's pnd ask him to come early to-morrow morning, and she had bettor take a room in tho inn there. It ie quite nice. ... I know the people. ... I shan't try to get back to the mill until to-morrow. Come as quickly as you can, dear.—Your loving mother. It was written in Mrs. Fletcher's bold, characteristic writing, a little shaky, as was only to be expected. Joan lost no time in hurrying into the car, leaving Peggie to lock up the mill and cycle in search of Dr. Dawson, tho nearest medical man. The chauffeur could give no further information, so Joan lay back and worried about her mother. The car was really a taxi, tho driver being shut off by_ a partition. It ran smoothly and at a high rate of speed, and Joan did not take much notice in which direction it was carrying her. Her mother, she reflected, must have been pretty oad to write a note like that, Sho took it out and studied it carefully. Even when she had been ill> Mrs. Fletcher had never . signed her correspondence to Joan with the one word " Mother." < Joan smiled to herself as Bhe recollected a sharp " telling off " she had received upon what her mother called a foolish and unbusinesslike way of signing notes. It was her theory that even unimportant

•notes should be aigned with the surname of the writer, and all her letters to Joan were signed: —" Your loving mother, A. A. Fletcher." Now, however she was hurt, and Joan thought that sufficient reason for departure from an established custom. She was, indeed, putting away the letter and preparing to compose herself to a spell of waiting until they should arrive at the cottage hospital, when she became aware of an alarming fact. They were not going toward London at all. The milestones told her that. All in a, moment black terror leaped upon the girl. Her mother had gone to London —that she knew—and must have been on her way out when the accident occurred—if there had been an accident. at all. She was being whirled at a great speed in the opposite direction to that in which her mother was supposed to be lying awaiting her. This could only mean one thing. She was being carried off somewhere. Now, in justice to the stumpy chauffeur, whosa name was Matt Burley, and who acted as abused and underpaid assistant to the persistent Captain Browne, it must be said at once that nothing _so melodramatic as the idea of kidnapping Miss Joan Fletcher had crossed his mina for a minute. It was essential to his chief's plans tc obtain an evening alone in the Windmill in order that he might find out what was going on upstairs. For it was not, Captain Browne who had installed the steel door, and he was as curious as the Fletchers to find out what lay behind it. On the occasion of Mrs. Fletcher's visit to town, therefore, he discovered that only (he two girls were loft in the mill. It had not been difficult for Captain Browne to write a note in a hand resembling Mrs. Fletcher's, which was an unusual one, and of which he had a specimen in a note from her declining an invitation to dinner, which he had sent to tho ladies. By means of this note, Captain Browne hoped to have the mill to himself for one whole night. Peggie, beiite merely j a maid, would naturally obey orders and go whore she was told. Joan was only to be driven far enough away to make a return that evening an impossibility. Matt Burley would then falter forth some feeble apology, declaring lie had mistaken tho road. Fie would see that she had money with her for her night's lodging, and any other needful expenses, and would then drive away promising to fetch her in tho morning, after he had " made inquiries." Of course, he would not return. It would be easy enough to tho girl—who by then would know the chauffeur for a deceiver —to return by train in the morning to the mill, or to telegraph her mother there. Peggie, too, would be back in the morning. They could sort themselves out then as they pleased. Captain Browne hoped by then to have learnt all he wanted to know, and there need be no evidence that he had ever been near the mill. He was supposed to be in bed at the inn with a violent headache. »*■»*•* Poor Joan knew nothing of all this. She only knew she was being carried away from the mill, in the opposite direction to where her mother was supposed to be lying ill, waiting for her. This chauffeur was plainly a ruffian. She must save herself while she had the chance. Every yard further away from London and from the mill made matters worse. She opened the door softly. At first it stuck, and deadly panic seized her lest it should be locked in some way. But at last it gave to her efforts and she stood on the running board of the car, clinging to the handle of the door, and peering down at the road, which flew so giddily and swiftly beneath her. She had a horrid conviction that to jump would probably be certain death. Well, she must chance it. She was not going to be carried off, anyway. At any instant the driver of tho car might, look round and see her escaping. lis might be a desperate character. Perhaps he was one o! those homicidal lunatics one read of in the papers. This last thought settled it. Joan shut, her eyes and jumped. When. Joan Fletcher opened her eyes after leaping from the speeding car, she was startled to find a strange young man bending over her. To her relief, however, he bore no resemblance to tho stumpy, thick-set driver of the car._ He was very tall, very fair, and exceedingly worried.

" By Jove, I am thankful to see you alive," ho exclaimed in relief. " I didn't see how you could avoid being killed at the rate that car was travelling. How do you feel, Miss Fletcher ?" Joan sat up and wriggled experimentally. She poked an inquiring finger into her curls, where a largo bump was making itself felt. She moved her arms and legs experimentally, and then she smiled at the tall young man It was a dazrJing smile, and then and there, in that very moment, Nigel Armitage lost his heart to her, and never got it back again. He did not quite realise /this at the time. He merely said to himself in his uncultured slahg, what a perfectly topping girl Miss Fletcher was. s "I am quite all right, thank yon," shf> said. "By sheer good fortune I fell on a heap of manure! One does not often find soft heaps to fall on by the roadside. I suppose this is going to be carted into these allotments to-morrow, but I am jolly glad it was here to-day." " Are you sure you haven't broken any hones?" persisted the big, fair young man. "Positive," she reassured him. "I should be sure to know if I had! I feel as though I had been banged all over with a carpet beater, but otherwise I am fairly fit. Who are you ? And how do you know my name ?" "My name is Arm-R-Richardson. I came back with Mrs. Fletcher this afternoon to help solve the mystery at the Windmill. When we were nearly there we were stopped by a roadman and told to go in the other direction, because you had had a serious accident and had been token to a cottage hospital, and were crying out for Mrs. Fletcher. . . •' '"My hat! What a yarn!" Joan was sitting upright, listening eagerly. " Mrs. Fletcher did not believe it, went on tho young man. " She felt sure you would never have left tho mill, after her urgent injunctions. However, she protended to believe it, and set off in the direction indicated by the roadman, but as soon an wo were well out of sight she took another turning, and raced back to the mill, to see whe'.hor you were still there, or what had happened. We found n young girl whom she addressed as * Peggie ' Holding the fort, with two dogs and tho kitchen poker. She said you had been whirled off by a false message the opposite way to London, and had not been gone more than a quarter of an hour 1 took Mrs. Fletcher's car and gave chase, wltilo she stood by for emergencies at the mill. . . . T was still some distance off when I saw you jump. ... If you feel equal to it, may I drive you home now ?" Joan stared at him reflectively. " I wonder whether you are all right ?" she mused aloud. " You see-—you may bo making all this up! I don't think you are, but I feel suspicious of every stranger, just at. this moment." " Come and look at your mother's car," suggested Nigel Armitage. " And, if you like, I'll drive very slowly, of the doors unlatched so that you tan hop out at any moment. You must not get it into your head that every man who offers to drive you anywhere has sinster designs. I assure you that I am most awfully respectable. I could procure for you excellent testimonials as to my stolid repeatability frou, my employer, my formor headmaster and others. I have not tho slightest intention of kidnapping you —on my honour I haven't. Look, here is tho car. Is it the right one?" Joan was feeling rather more shaky now than when she first awoke to consciousness on the manure heap, but she was reassured by seeing that it was indeed the family car, and she noticed with gratitude that the big young man, though continuing to talk nonsense with amazing fluency, lost no time in packing her into it, and covering her up warmly with rugs, while evidently expecting no replies to his chatter. She was con'ent to sit there quite still, only noting with relief that, ihip time, the car was certainly proceeding in the right direction In a very short time Nigel Armitage swung into the wide gateway leading to the mill, and Joan leapt out into her mother's arms. (To be continued on Saturday next)