* * * * *

Meanwhile the young man who had rescued her press cuttings had fallen,
barely an hour after his parting from her, upon evil fortunes.

His bicycle had carried him swiftly down the valley toward the Whitebeck
bridge. Just above the bridge, a steep pitch of hill, one of those
specimens of primitive road-making that abound in Cumbria, descended
rapidly into a dark hollow, with a high wall on one side, overhung by
trees, and on the other a bank, broken three parts of tie way down by the
entrance of a side road. At the top of the hill, Faversham, to give the
youth his name, stopped to look at the wall, which was remarkable for
height and strength. The thick wood on his right hid any building there
might be on the farther side of the stream. But clearly this was the
Ogre's wall--ogreish indeed! A man might well keep a cupboard full of
Fatimas, alive or dead, on the other side of it, or a coiner's press, or
a banknote factory, or any other romantic and literary villainy.
Faversham found himself speculating with amusement on the old curmudgeon
behind the wall; always with the vision, drawn by recollection on the
leafy background, of a girl's charming face--clear pale skin, beautiful
eyes, more blue surely than gray--the whitest neck, with coils of brown
hair upon it--the mouth with its laughing freedom--yet reticent--no mere
silly sweetness!

Then putting on his brake, he began to coast down the hill, which opened
gently only to turn without notice into something scandalously
precipitous. The bicycle had been hired in Keswick, and had had a hard
season's use. The brake gave way at the worst moment of the hill, and
Faversham, unable to save himself, rushed to perdition. And by way of
doubling his misfortune, as in the course of his mad descent he reached