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ten-tonner, though I won’t pretend that my seamanship is in the same street as that of Captain Joshua Slocum.
    I moved up closer to the garden hedge and began to study the house intently. There were no lights showing now. I remember that I was very cold. I thought I could see that one of the windows of the morning-room was open; for what seemed an interminable time I stood leaning on the hedge, listening to the noises of the night, watching the house.
    Presently a light flashed on in one of the upper windows, and almost at the same moment I saw Compton. He was standing on the lawn in the shadow of a clump of laurels; I saw him move silently across the grass and vanish into the shadow by the window.
    I sighed with relief. The main part of my job was over; from now onwards I should be acting in a purely advisory capacity. I think I really believed that at the moment. As I have said, I was most frightfully tired.
    I waited for a few minutes, then got through the hedge and crossed the lawn to the house. There was somebody standing at the unlighted window; as I drew near I saw it was Joan Stevenson.
    ‘Mr. Stenning,’ she whispered.
    I got into the house through the window. It was then about twenty minutes past eleven.

CHAPTER TWO
    A S soon as I got into the morning-room I made straight for the anthracite stove; I was nearly perished with cold from hanging about outside, though it was June. For some reason connected with the old man’s health a stove was kept burning in this room all through the summer; they had not turned on a light but had made up the stove to such an extent that it threw a warm glow all over the room. Compton was sitting on a chair in front of the stove clad only in a shirt, and pulling on a pair of very large grey flannel trousers. Miss Stevenson was moving quietly about the room in the semi-darkness collecting the materials for a meal. I stood warming myself by the fire, and for a time none of us spoke a word.
    Compton finished his dressing, stood up, and turned to me. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said quietly, ‘but I never asked you your name.…’
    ‘Stenning,’ I said. ‘Philip Stenning.’
    He nodded. ‘Yes. I don’t think I need try and tell you how grateful I am to you for—for this?’ He glanced at the table and the room.
    ‘I don’t think you need,’ I said, and laughed. ‘What comes next?’
    He did not seem to have heard my question. He stood for a long time staring down at his own feet, warmly lit up in the glow from the stove.
    ‘What comes next?’ he said at last. ‘If I could tellyou that I don’t suppose I should be—like this. Plato wanted to know that, didn’t he? and Sophocles—certainly Sophocles. But I’m so rusty on all that stuff now.’
    ‘Come and have some supper,’ said the girl from behind the table. ‘You must be frightfully hungry.’
    He roused himself. ‘I’m not very hungry. But thanks, Joan. What’s that you’ve got there—ham? I’d like a bit of ham. And then I must cut off again.’
    ‘Don’t be a fool,’ I said. ‘Where are you going to?’
    He shook his head. ‘God only knows,’ he muttered. ‘I must lie low for a bit.’
    I saw the girl pause in the dim light behind the table, and stare at him. ‘You must get out of the country somehow, Denis,’ she said. ‘You must get to France.’
    He looked at her vaguely. ‘I suppose that’s the thing to do,’ he said at last. ‘But I’ve got to stay in England for the present.’
    She looked at him in that uncomfortable, direct way that she had. ‘What do you mean—you’ve got to?’
    He pulled out a chair from the table and sat down. ‘I don’t know if you imagine that I cut out of prison for fun,’ he said heavily. ‘Anyway—I didn’t.’ He relapsed into silence again, and sat for a time brooding with his eyes on the table.
    The girl looked at me helplessly.
    I cleared my throat. ‘I don’t want to butt in on any private business,’ I said. ‘But isn’t this going a bit