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outside. Not that there is any rooted antagonism between the troops and the people of the country. If there is any enmity, it is a purely artificial one, created by the exceptional circumstances of the moment; for during long years the soldiers of the garrisons and the folk among whom they dwelt were the best of friends. Frequently they shared their sports and amusements in the most perfect amity. It is a bitter reflection that a small minority of mischief-makers has been able to ruin the good feeling that once prevailed, and to replace it by doubt and suspicion and mutual dis

trust.

On their return journey they passed along the northern side of the wide park of which they had a sight on their arrival from the south. The outward journey had been the more important of the two, but the other might be equally perilous. And they were fully conscious of this. If they had been missed the first time, which was possible, their pursuers might try to waylay them on their return. And the route which they would be forced to take, at least for the first two miles out of Dolney, unless they were prepared to make a tremendous detour, was as well suited for an ambush as the road along the valley.

For the first mile and a half it descended continually with one or two sharp turnings, and the ground on either side sloped away swiftly from it. On either side for the whole

of that distance, there was a boundary wall of about three feet in height; on the left of the route this wall ran down into the park of Dolney to a depth of ten feet. And half a mile farther on the park gave place to an immense wood which stretched away on either side of the highway, the wall still continuing.

When they entered the dark shades of the wood, as if in answer to an irresistible intuition, the men looked to their rifles, and made sure where the bombs lay. The Lewis gunner grasped his weapon more firmly and placed his finger on the trigger, while the officer took out his revolver and laid it across his knees.

They gazed intently into the thick screen of foliage, which hid the sunlight, for the sign of a head over the wall. "Now, steady round the corner," said a man's voice between his teeth. "I've been this way before. This is the devil's death - trap." Then every one listened for the note of the motor-horn of the despatoh-rider in front. But no sound came.

"Forrard away,

then. We're out of that." And the driver pressed his foot down on to the accelerator and pushed back his gear to top speed.

All this had needed only a few seconds. The tension relaxed slightly, an easy lightheartedness was taking the place of the sombre attitude of expectation.

And then suddenly one of them pointed to the man on the motor bicycle. He was

holding up his hand and Pursuit through those trees, waving it. Surely it couldn't and in an unknown country, be-and then, without further was hopeless. So they pressed time for investigation, bang!!! on again full steam ahead, the just in front of the car; and a despatch-rider keeping only a score of high-pitohed notes few yards in front of the car, hummed through the air, with instructions to shout on following the first explosion the appearance of anything by the smallest fraction of a suspicious. second, like the sudden release of a group of angry hornets.

Then came briskly the retort as the rap-rap-rap of the Lewis gunner out through the bushes.

And there was no further sound from the wood as it lay there, contrasting with the sunlight that broke in above them, almost as black as night.

The bioyole had turned round, the car had stopped. "Are there any casualties?"

"No; only one man, sir! Turton, a graze on the ear."

And then to the bioyclist as he came up to them: "And why didn't you blow your

horn?"

"I did blow it, sir, but I couldn't get any sound out of it."

Another ten minutes and they were topping a rise, leaving the forest far below, as they rose into the clear air and the wide expanses of the hills. A glorious sensation of triumph was added to the exhilarating influence of the wind 88 it rushed past. Far away before them lay a series of orests, growing purpler and purpler in the distance. And all round the green of the trees in the valleys contrasted with the bright colours of the heather that orowned the heights. Occasionally down below them glittered the silver of some stream or lake, while a hawk poised himself above them for an instant, and then swooped with unerring stroke over a shoulder of the hill.

(To be continued.)

3 B

VOL, CCVIII.-NO. MCCLXII.

YOU CHANGE AT CLAPHAM JUNCTION.

BY EVELYNE BUXTON.

MR PECKLEBURY, one Saturday afternoon in January 1920, was assiduously gardening in the front garden of the neat detached villa-residence in which he dwelt with his step-aunt, when some one coming from the direction of the suburban station, not a stone's-throw away, passed the gate, paused, returned, looked over it, and said

"I beg your pardon, but can you tell me the name of this place?"

"This is Paddispor, sir," said Mr Pecklebury, looking up from the minute grass border he was clipping at his step-aunt's behest in case it should grow.

"What a delightful spot it appears to be!" said the welldressed young man at the gate, gazing blissfully about him upon the little red villaresidences which surrounded Mr Pecklebury's in their hundreds along the neat laburnumed roads.

Mr Pecklebury's eyes left the young man's face. He sat back on his heels, and his gaze also travelled round as much of the villa-residences as he could see. He looked at them pensively, as though he had once or twice before gazed round on them thus and wondered what they really looked like.

"Have you lost your way, sir?" he inquired, his eyes returning to the young man.

"Well, not here exactly," said the young young man. "I couldn't exactly be said to have had a way here to lose, you see. Not as yet! I've only just arrived."

"Did you come by mistake?” inquired Mr Pecklebury, selecting, after a brief pause of not unnatural bewilderment, the question which seemed most likely to lead to enlightenment.

"I can't call it a mistake," said the young man. He gazed intensely round him. "I feel as if all other places in the world were a mistake, and this alone were the place to come to. I feel as if I had come to the place of my dreams-dreams I had never so much as realised I was dreaming, I do assure you," he added with a change of voice, bringing suddenly puzzled eyes back to Mr Pecklebury's surprised face.

They gazed at each other a moment, and then Mr Pecklebury made an earnest effort to reduce what he could not help feeling to be a rising element of incomprehensibility in the situation.

"If you came here in a train by mistake, sir," he said, "that is, if you have arrived here without meaning to, perhaps you took the wrong train."

"I can't call it the wrong train," said the young man, smiling rapturously.

"Perhaps, for instance, you sir," replied Mr Pecklebury forgot to change at Clapham with some warmth, "when I Junction," continued Mr Peckle- haven't the least idea what it bury firmly. "It frequently is you're talking about?" happens that people forget to change at Clapham Junction, and one or two trains run straight through to Puddispor." "I did change at Clapham Junction," said the young man. "I had to change there to catch a train for my grandfather's place in Hampshire, and a porter took me across several platforms and put

me"

At that moment a lady hurrying by, apparently in some agitation, jostled against the young man as he stood talking earnestly in the middle of the path.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she gasped.

"It's granted, I'm sure," said the young man, skipping round and beaming and smiling.

The lady hurried on and entered the next gate, and the young man turned and looked at Mr Pecklebury with a gaze of blank bewilderment. "What did I say just now?" he demanded.

"What did you say just when?" inquired Mr Pecklebury, still seated upon his heels.

"Just now," said the young

man.

"What did you say just now?" said Mr Pecklebury with interest.

"That's what I'm asking you!" said the young man, "It's impossible that I really said what I believe I said."

"How on earth can I know what it is you believe you said,

"Well, never mind," said the young man, sighing. “It was only that I seemed to myself to have said something I never said in my life before, and that I didn't know any one ever said. But it's clear they do! At least I do! At least I do here!"

Mr Pecklebury looked at him again a moment in silence, and then remarked gently, "Don't you think, sir, that it would be almost better if you went home? You wouldn't have to wait long for a train back, you know, for we are a terminus

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"A terminus!" oried the young man rapturously. "Did you say a terminus? Impossible! sible! Incredible ! Is there really such a thing as a terminus still to be found in this boundless, breaking, oracking, whirling world, where there doesn't seem to be a single thing left that isn't leading straight to something else, and nearly always something dreadful! A terminus! We are a terminus! Beautiful! Incredible!"

"I do really advise you, sir," said Mr Pecklebury earnestly, "to go instantly straight home."

"I am home," oried the young man. "I'm never going away. I'm never going anywhere but farther and farther into this delightful spot," and he bounded away among the detached villa-residences.

"Poor fellow, poor fellow," murmured Mr Pecklebury, shaking his head as he prepared to get back on to his knees to continue clipping the garden border. "Mad, or drunk, or both, I'm afraid;” and at that instant an agitated voice said over the neat little privet hedge that divided his step-aunt's garden from the next villa garden

"Oh, Mr Pecklebury, Mr Peoklebury, have you heard the dreadful news! The Vicar's gone!"

It was the lady who had jostled the young man in her hurry a minute before.

"God bless my soul, Miss de Wilkin!" ejaculated Mr Pecklebury, sinking back upon his heels in his surprise. "The Vicar! Gone! Dead! Impossible! Why, only last Sunday

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No, no, not dead, Mr Peoklebury," cried Miss de Wilkin, clasping at herself in profound agitation. "At least we hope he's not dead. We don't know that he's dead. We don't know what he is. We reelly don't. He's merely gone."

"But, God bless my soul ! Miss de Wilkin," said Mr Peoklebury, sorambling to his feet, "where to?"

"Nobody knows," said Miss de Wilkin. "They reelly don't. He went up to London for the day by the 8.15 without so much as a bag in the hand five days ago, his housekeeper says; and he's never come back, and there's not been a sight or sound of him since; and they kept it quiet at first, in the hope there would be news of him; but now it's

everywhere, and I heard the rumour from the milkman, and I hurried round to ask; and oh, Mr Pecklebury, it's perfectly true, it reelly is. He is known to have changed at the Junction, like you always have to by the 8.15, but where he went to when he changed nobody knows. He's gone.'

"If the Vicar's gone, Eliza Wilkins," said a lofty voice behind them, "there's only one place he's gone to, and that's over to Rome.’

"Oh, Mrs Bath," quavered Miss de Wilkin, clasping at herself.

"And he hadn't far to go either," continued Mrs Bath majestically. "I wonder it's taken him five days, for he was practically there already. The bowings and curtseyings and processings and workings of the Puddispor congregation could have told anybody that! I regret to hurt your feelings, Eliza Wilkins, but I must refuse to pander. If the Vicar's gone, he's gone over to Rome; and it's where he belongs. Henry, come in to your tea.

"But you don't go over to Rome through Clapham Junotion, Step-aunt Bath," protested Mr Pecklebury, struggling against the muddled sensation which the remarks of Mrs Bath not infrequently produced in the brain.

"As it's impossible to get to any part of the Continent from Puddispor except through Clapham Junotion, Henry," replied Mrs Bath; "and as I bave always understood Rome to be on the Continent, I fail to per ceive the force of your conten

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