"True enough," was the brief reply. "What of it?"

The man coughed as he deposited the dispatch box which he had been
carrying on the seat of the waiting car.

"They think a lot of him down in these parts, sir," he observed, a
little apologetically.

Tallente made no answer to the station master's last speech and merely
waved his hand a little mechanically as the car drove off. His mind was
already busy with the problem suggested by Miller's appearance in these
parts. For the first few minutes of his drive he was back again in the
turmoil which he had left. Then with a little shrug of the shoulders he
abandoned this new enigma. Its solution must be close at hand.

Arrived at the edge of the dusty, white strip of road along which he had
travelled over the moors from the station, Tallente leaned forward and
watched the unfolding panorama below with a little start of surprise.
He had passed through acres of yellowing gorse, of purple heather and
mossy turf, fragrant with the aromatic perfume of sun-baked herbiage.
In the distance, the moorland reared itself into strange promontories,
out-flung to the sea. On his right, a little farm, with its cluster of
out-buildings, nestled in the bosom of the hills. On either side, the
fields still stretched upward like patchwork to a clear sky, but below,
down into the hollow, blotting out all that might lie beneath, was a
curious sea of rolling white mist, soft and fleecy yet impenetrable.
Tallente, who had seen very little of this newly chosen country home of
his, had the feeling, as the car crept slowly downward, of one about to
plunge into a new life, to penetrate into an unknown world. A man of