Saltash puffed at the cigarette, peering at him curiously through the smoke.  “Which may account for your failure to find Ivor Yardley,” he suggested after a moment.

“In what way?” said Dick.

Saltash straightened himself.  “I imagine he is not a great believer in—­philanthropy,” he said.

Dick’s eyes shone with an ominous glitter.  “From my point of view these insinuations are not worth considering,” he said, “though no doubt it has given you a vast amount of enjoyment to fabricate them.”

“I!” said Saltash.

“You!” said Dick.

There was a moment’s silence, then Saltash began to laugh.  “My dear chap, you don’t really think that!  You’d like to—­but you can’t!”

Dick looked at him, thin-lipped, uncompromising, silent.

“You actually do?” questioned Saltash.  “You really think I care a twopenny damn what anybody thinks about you or anyone else under the sun?  I say, don’t be an ass.  Green, whatever else you are!  It’s too tiring for all concerned.  If you really want to know who is responsible—­”

“Well?” said Dick.

“Well,” Saltash sent a cloud of smoke upwards, “look a bit nearer home, man!  Haven’t you got—­a brother somewhere?”

Dick gave a sudden start.  “I have not!” he said sternly.

Saltash nodded.  “Ah!  Well, I imagine Yardley knows him if you don’t.  He is the traitor in the camp, and he’s out to trip you if he can.”  He laughed again with careless humour.  “I don’t know why I should give you the tip.  It is not my custom to heap coals of fire.  Pray excuse them on this occasion!  I suppose you are quite determined to take Juliette to the meeting to-night?”

“I am quite determined to go,” said Juliet quietly, as she came down the stairs.  “Will you have anything, Charles?  No?  Then let us start!  It is getting late.  You are driving yourself?”

He threw open the door for her with a deep bow.  “I always drive myself, Juliette, and—­I always get there,” he said.

Her faint laugh floated back to Dick as he followed them out.

CHAPTER VII

FLIGHT

It was a dumb and sullen crowd that Dick Green faced that night in the great barn on the slope of High Shale.

A rough platform had been erected at one end of the place and this, with the deal table and lamp and one or two chairs, was all that went to the furnishing of his assembly-room.  The men stood in a close crowd like herded cattle, and the atmosphere of the place was heavy with the reek of humanity and coarse tobacco-smoke.  There was a door at each end, but the night was still and dark and there was little air beyond the vague chill of a creeping sea-mist.

Dick, entering at the door at the platform end of the building instead of passing straight up through the crowd as was his custom, was aware of a curious influence at work from the first moment—­an influence adverse if not directly hostile that reached him he knew not how.  He heard a vague murmur as Juliet and Saltash followed him, and sharply he turned and drew Juliet to his side.  In that instant he realized that she was the only woman in the place.