the wood save an occasional bird.  The Squire, like most men of his type, was an early riser, and it was not likely that he would in this case sleep late; it was much more likely, in the excitement in which he had left them, that he would not sleep at all.  Yet it was clear that he must be sleeping, perhaps by some reaction from a strain.  By the time the sun was high in heaven Ashe the lawyer, turning to the others, spoke abruptly and to the point.

“Shall we go into the wood now?” asked Paynter, and almost seemed to hesitate.

“I will go in,” said Treherne simply.  Then, drawing up his dark head in answer to their glances, he added: 

“No, do not trouble yourselves.  It is never the believer who is afraid.”

For the second time they saw a man mount the white curling path and disappear into the gray tangled wood, but this time they did not have to wait long to see him again.

A few minutes later he reappeared in the woodland gateway, and came slowly toward them across the grass.  He stopped before the doctor, who stood nearest, and said something.  It was repeated to the others, and went round the ring with low cries of incredulity.  The others plunged into the wood and returned wildly, and were seen speaking to others again who gathered from the house; the wild wireless telegraphy which is the education of countryside communities spread it farther and farther before the fact itself was fully realized; and before nightfall a quarter of the county knew that Squire Vane had vanished like a burst bubble.

Widely as the wild story was repeated, and patiently as it was pondered, it was long before there was even the beginning of a sequel to it.  In the interval Paynter had politely removed himself from the house of mourning, or rather of questioning, but only so far as the village inn; for Barbara Vane was glad of the traveler’s experience and sympathy, in addition to that afforded her by the lawyer and doctor as old friends of the family.  Even Treherne was not discouraged from his occasional visits with a view to helping the hunt for the lost man.  The five held many counsels round the old garden table, at which the unhappy master of the house had dined for the last time; and Barbara wore her old mask of stone, if it was now a more tragic mask.  She had shown no passion after the first morning of discovery, when she had broken forth once, speaking strangely enough in the view of some of her hearers.

She had come slowly out of the house, to which her own or some one else’s wisdom had relegated her during the night of the wager; and it was clear from her face that somebody had told her the truth; Miles, the butler, stood on the steps behind her; and it was probably he.

“Do not be much distressed, Miss Vane,” said Doctor Brown, in a low and rather uncertain voice.  “The search in the wood has hardly begun.  I am convinced we shall find—­something quite simple.”