“Been down to your house, I believe, sir.  He arrived by the early train this morning and asked the way to the Manor.”

“To my house?” Tallente repeated incredulously.

“It was the Manor he asked for, sir,” the station master assured his questioner.  “Begging your pardon, sir, is it true that he was Miller, the Socialist M.P.?”

“True enough,” was the brief reply.  “What of it?”

The man coughed as he deposited the dispatch box which he had been carrying on the seat of the waiting car.

“They think a lot of him down in these parts, sir,” he observed, a little apologetically.

Tallente made no answer to the station master’s last speech and merely waved his hand a little mechanically as the car drove off.  His mind was already busy with the problem suggested by Miller’s appearance in these parts.  For the first few minutes of his drive he was back again in the turmoil which he had left.  Then with a little shrug of the shoulders he abandoned this new enigma.  Its solution must be close at hand.

Arrived at the edge of the dusty, white strip of road along which he had travelled over the moors from the station, Tallente leaned forward and watched the unfolding panorama below with a little start of surprise.  He had passed through acres of yellowing gorse, of purple heather and mossy turf, fragrant with the aromatic perfume of sun-baked herbiage.  In the distance, the moorland reared itself into strange promontories, out-flung to the sea.  On his right, a little farm, with its cluster of out-buildings, nestled in the bosom of the hills.  On either side, the fields still stretched upward like patchwork to a clear sky, but below, down into the hollow, blotting out all that might lie beneath, was a curious sea of rolling white mist, soft and fleecy yet impenetrable.  Tallente, who had seen very little of this newly chosen country home of his, had the feeling, as the car crept slowly downward, of one about to plunge into a new life, to penetrate into an unknown world.  A man of extraordinarily sensitive perceptions, leading him often outside the political world in which he fought the battle of life, he was conscious of a curious and grim premonition as the car, crawling down the precipitous hillside, approached and was enveloped in the grey shroud.  The world which a few moments before had seemed so wonderful, the sunlight, the distant view of the sea, the perfumes of flowers and shrubs, had all gone.  The car was crawling along a rough and stony road, between hedges dripping with moisture and trees dimly seen like spectres.  At last, about three-quarters of the way down to the sea, after an abrupt turn, they entered a winding avenue and emerged on to a terrace.  The chauffeur, who had felt the strain of the drive, ran a little past the front door and pulled up in front of an uncurtained window.  Tallente glanced in, dazzled a little at first by the unexpected lamplight.  Then he understood the premonition which had sat shivering in his heart during the long descent.