At first, dimly and then with brighter flash, she saw a light within.  Creeping slowly forward, wading in the stream and stumbling over rough blocks of stone, she made toward the light.  Midway the passage, the side wall of the culvert had fallen or been torn down and there in a little damp clay nook, sitting hunched upon a rock was the silhouette of the unshaven man.

Beyond him glowed the dim light and by its faint rays he was hurriedly writing in a note book.

With a start he became aware of her presence, and turned the flash-light upon her.

“I followed you,” she stammered.  “I want to explain.  I’m an American girl captive among the Japanese.”

He stared at her quizzically in the dim light.

“I ran from you,” he said, “because I was afraid to trust you—­there are a number of Europeans among the Japanese forces.  I couldn’t know that you wouldn’t have given the alarm, and for one man to run from fifty thousand isn’t cowardice; it’s common sense—­even bravery, perhaps, when there’s a cause at stake.”

“I understand,” replied the girl.

“Won’t you be seated?” he said, arising and offering her his place on the rock.  She accepted, and he asked her for more of her story.

In reply she told him whom she was and related as briefly as she could the incidents of her life that accounted for her peculiar predicament.

“I suppose I owe you something of an explanation, too;” he said, when she had finished.  “My name is Winslow—­Stanley Winslow; I am —­or at least was—–­the editor of the Regenerationist.  Do you know what that is?”

Ethel confessed, that she did not.

“Perhaps I flatter myself, but then I suppose you have had no chance to keep up on American affairs.”

Just then a crash, followed by a whirring, clattering noise broke in above the sound of the man’s voice and the gurgle of the brook running through their hiding-place.

“What’s that?” Winslow exclaimed, starting towards the end of the culvert.

[Illustration:  She was washing her woven grass sandals by rubbing the soles together in the stream.]

Ethel followed him.  Before they reached the open the trees in front of them were lit up by the lurid light of a fire.  Beside the road a hundred yards away was the crumpled mass of a metallic aeroplane.  The gasolene tank had burst open and was blazing furiously.

“Americans,” said Winslow; “let’s see if the crew are dead.”

The gasolene had largely spent itself by the time they reached the plane.

Poking about in the crumbled debris, they found the driver impaled upon a lever that protruded from his back.

“I wonder what grounded her,” mused Winslow, as he inspected the dead man with his flash-lamp.  “Oh! here we are!  Good shooting that,” he added, pointing with his lamp to a soggy hole in the side of the man’s head.

“I guess they’re at it,” he said, pressing out his light and turning his eyes skyward.