* * * * *

Recruited by lunch and a brief period of slumber, Mrs Anstruther settled
herself comfortably upon her sketching chair in the path leading through
the shrubbery to the side-gate of the churchyard. Trees and buildings
were among her favourite subjects, and here she had good studies of both.
She worked hard, and the drawing was becoming a really pleasant thing to
look upon by the time that the wooded hills to the west had shut off the
sun. Still she would have persevered, but the light changed rapidly, and
it became obvious that the last touches must be added on the morrow. She
rose and turned towards the house, pausing for a time to take delight in
the limpid green western sky. Then she passed on between the dark
box-bushes, and, at a point just before the path debouched on the lawn,
she stopped once again and considered the quiet evening landscape, and
made a mental note that that must be the tower of one of the Roothing
churches that one caught on the sky-line. Then a bird (perhaps) rustled
in the box-bush on her left, and she turned and started at seeing what at
first she took to be a Fifth of November mask peeping out among the
branches. She looked closer.

It was not a mask. It was a face--large, smooth, and pink. She remembers
the minute drops of perspiration which were starting from its forehead:
she remembers how the jaws were clean-shaven and the eyes shut. She
remembers also, and with an accuracy which makes the thought intolerable
to her, how the mouth was open and a single tooth appeared below the
upper lip. As she looked the face receded into the darkness of the bush.
The shelter of the house was gained and the door shut before she
collapsed.