souls. One was seeking to have his enemy done to death, the other was
apparently trying to stir up his supporters to an act of "Lynch law". All
this in order that there might be an unopposed election, that one or
other of the candidates might go into Parliament with honeyed eloquence
on his lips and blood on his heart. Were men really so vile?

"I must go back to Webblehinton at once," Alethia informed her astonished
hostess at lunch time; "I have had a telegram. A friend is very
seriously ill and I have been sent for."

It was dreadful to have to concoct lies, but it would be more dreadful to
have to spend another night under that roof.

Alethia reads novels now with even greater appreciation than before. She
has been herself in the world outside Webblehinton, the world where the
great dramas of sin and villainy are played unceasingly. She had come
unscathed through it, but what might have happened if she had gone
unsuspectingly to visit Sir John Chobham and warn him of his danger? What
indeed! She had been saved by the fearless outspokenness of the local
Press.




THE INTERLOPERS


In a forest of mixed growth somewhere on the eastern spurs of the
Karpathians, a man stood one winter night watching and listening, as
though he waited for some beast of the woods to come within the range of