The colonel shrugged his shoulders and chuckled grimly.

“However, I must take care that he does not see me.”

Slipping behind a tree, the colonel effected a change in hats, for he always wore a soft one and carried several collapsible ones.  Then, buttoning his coat rather askew about him, to give a careless air to his attire (the colonel, normally was one of the neatest men living) he crossed to the other side of the street and then became the shadower of two instead of one, for Aaron Grafton had passed on without, apparently, noticing him.

The woman was still in sight, and before she reached the station the man who had sent the note came out and met her on the driveway.  The colonel looked back and saw Mr. Grafton dodging behind a tree.

“He doesn’t want to be seen, either,” he mused.

Relying on his simple but effective disguise, the colonel made bold to walk within hearing distance of the man and woman, the latter having come to a stiff halt when she saw the man advancing to meet her.

“We can’t talk here,” said the dispatcher of the note.  “Will you walk a little way with me?”

His tones had the cutting coldness of steel, and there was a sort of restrained cruelty in his every action.

“I suppose it would not be wise to be seen talking to you here,” was the woman’s low reply.  “And, believe me, I have no desire to be seen with you again, ever.  It was only your promise in the note that brought me here.  Are you prepared to keep it if I walk a way with you?”

“I am!  This is no more pleasant for me than for you, but it must be done.  Come!”

He did not offer to touch her, nor did he turn his head more than half way in speaking to her.  He seemed to be controlling himself by an effort, and she seemed to shrink away.  Again she looked back, down the fast-darkening street, as though to make sure there was a way of escape—­some one near on whom she could rely.

“Don’t worry.  I’ll be there when you have your little talk,” whispered the colonel to himself.

“Suppose we walk up on The Heights,” suggested the man.  “We will not be disturbed, and—­”

“Up there?” she gasped.

“Why not?” he asked, as they walked on, and the colonel, affecting a slowness in gait, heard the words.  “Just because you used to walk there in your—­in other days,” he substituted quickly, “is no reason why you shouldn’t now, is it?”

“Only—­memories!” Her voice was very low.

“Memories?  Bah!” The words were as though he spewed them from his mouth like a bitter taste.  “Come on!” and his tones were rough.

The woman looked at him a moment with eyes that seemed to burn through her veil, and then followed.  The colonel passed on ahead, slouched across the street once more, and lagged behind, so that he might follow.

The couple turned toward the outskirts of the village, where, on a hill, known locally as “The Heights” there was a grove of trees.  Below the hill, at one place cutting deep into it and making a precipitous cliff, was a little river.  At the point where the stream had bitten into the hill it had washed for itself a defile, the bottom rock-covered, so that the waters swirled over it in foam.