She lifted her arms above her head in a wild aspiration.  And all in a moment it surprised her to feel her eyes wet with tears.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the young man who had rescued her press cuttings had fallen, barely an hour after his parting from her, upon evil fortunes.

His bicycle had carried him swiftly down the valley toward the Whitebeck bridge.  Just above the bridge, a steep pitch of hill, one of those specimens of primitive road-making that abound in Cumbria, descended rapidly into a dark hollow, with a high wall on one side, overhung by trees, and on the other a bank, broken three parts of tie way down by the entrance of a side road.  At the top of the hill, Faversham, to give the youth his name, stopped to look at the wall, which was remarkable for height and strength.  The thick wood on his right hid any building there might be on the farther side of the stream.  But clearly this was the Ogre’s wall—­ogreish indeed!  A man might well keep a cupboard full of Fatimas, alive or dead, on the other side of it, or a coiner’s press, or a banknote factory, or any other romantic and literary villainy.  Faversham found himself speculating with amusement on the old curmudgeon behind the wall; always with the vision, drawn by recollection on the leafy background, of a girl’s charming face—­clear pale skin, beautiful eyes, more blue surely than gray—­the whitest neck, with coils of brown hair upon it—­the mouth with its laughing freedom—­yet reticent—­no mere silly sweetness!

Then putting on his brake, he began to coast down the hill, which opened gently only to turn without notice into something scandalously precipitous.  The bicycle had been hired in Keswick, and had had a hard season’s use.  The brake gave way at the worst moment of the hill, and Faversham, unable to save himself, rushed to perdition.  And by way of doubling his misfortune, as in the course of his mad descent he reached the side road on the left, there came the loud clatter of a cart, and a young horse emerged almost at a gallop, with a man tugging vainly at its rein.

Ten minutes later a group of men stood consulting by the side of the road over Faversham’s prostrate form.  He was unconscious; his head and face were covered with blood, and his left ankle was apparently broken.  A small open motor stood at the bottom of the hill, and an angry dispute was going on between an old man in mire-stained working-clothes, and the young doctor from Pengarth to whom the motor belonged.

“I say, Mr. Dixon, that you’ve got to take this man into Mr. Melrose’s house and look after him, till he is fit to be moved farther, or you’ll be guilty of his death, and I shall give evidence accordingly!” said the doctor, with energy, as he raised himself from the injured man.

“Theer’s noa place for him i’ t’ Tower, Mr. Undershaw, an’ I’ll take noa sich liberty!”

“Then I will.  Where’s Mr. Melrose?”