Yardley’s cold eyes gleamed with icy humour. “Eh tu, Brute!” he said with sneering lips.  “I wish you—­joy!”

He passed on.  Saltash’s arm went round Juliet like a coiled spring.  He impelled her unresisting to the door.  Her hand rested on his shoulder as she stepped down from the platform.  She went with him as one in a dream.

The air smote chill as they left the heated atmosphere, and a great shiver went through her.

She stood still for a moment, listening.  The tumult had died down.  A man’s voice—­Dick’s voice—­clear and very steady, was speaking.

“Come away!” said Saltash in her ear.

But yet she lingered in the darkness.  “He will be safe?” she said.

“Of course he will be safe!  They treat him like a god.  Come away!”

His arm was urging her.  She yielded, shivering.

He hurried her up the slope to the place where he had left his car.  It stood at the side of the rough road that led to High Shale Point.

They reached it.  Juliet was gasping for breath.  The sea-mist was like rain in their faces.

“Get in!” he said.

She obeyed, sinking down with a vague thankfulness, conscious of great weakness.

But as he cranked the engine and she felt the throb of movement, she sat up quickly.

“Charles, what am I doing?  Where are you taking me?”

He came round to her and his hands clasped hers for a moment in a grip that was warm and close.  He did not speak at once.

Then, lightly, “I don’t know what you’ll do afterwards, ma Juliette,” he said.  “But you are coming with me now!”

She caught her breath as if she would utter some protest, but something checked her—­perhaps it was the memory of Dick’s face as she had last seen it, stony, grimly averted, uncompromisingly stern.  She gripped his hands in answer, but she did not speak a word.

And so they sped away together into the dark.

CHAPTER VIII

OUT OF THE NIGHT

It was very late that night, and the sea-mist had turned to a drifting rain when the squire sitting reading in his library at the Court was startled by a sudden tapping upon the window behind him.

So unexpected was the sound in the absolute stillness that he started with some violence and nearly knocked over the reading-lamp at his elbow.  Then sharply and frowning he arose.  He reached the window and fumbled at the blind; but failing to find the cord dragged it impatiently aside and peered through the glass.

“Who is it?  What do you want?”

A face he knew, but so drawn and deathly that for the moment it seemed almost unfamiliar, peered back at him.  In a second he had the window unfastened and flung wide.

“Dick!  In heaven’s name, boy,—­what’s the matter?”

Dick was over the sill in a single bound.  He stood up and faced the squire, bare-headed, drenched with rain, his eyes burning with a terrible fire.