The watcher in the garden moved a little to get a clearer view.

In the paroxysm of terror at this sudden coming to life of what they had believed to be a part of the bushes, the two little field-mice scampered away, and Dunn bit his lip with annoyance, for he knew well that some of those he had had traffic with in the past would have been very sure, on hearing that scurrying-off of the frightened mice, that some one was lurking near at hand.

But the two in the lighted doorway opening on the veranda heard and suspected nothing.

One was a man, one a woman, both were young, both were extraordinarily good-looking, and as they stood in the blaze of the gas they made a strikingly handsome and attractive picture on which, however, Dunn seemed to look from his hiding-place with hostility and watchful suspicion.

“How dark it is, there’s not a star showing,” the girl was saying.  “Shall you be able to find your way, even with the lantern?  You’ll keep to the road, won’t you?”

Her voice was low and pleasant and so clear Dunn heard every word distinctly.  She seemed quite young, not more than twenty or twenty-one, and she was slim and graceful in build and tall for a woman.  Her face, on which the light shone directly, was oval in shape with a broad, low forehead on which clustered the small, unruly curls of her dark brown hair, and she had clear and very bright brown eyes.  The mouth and chin were perhaps a little large to be in absolute harmony with the rest of her features, and she was of a dark complexion, with a soft and delicate bloom that would by itself have given her a right to claim her possession of a full share of good looks.  She was dressed quite simply in a white frock with a touch of colour at the waist and she had a very flimsy lace shawl thrown over her shoulders, presumably intended as a protection against the night air.

Her companion was a very tall and big man, well over six feet in height, with handsome, strongly-marked features that often bore an expression a little too haughty, but that showed now a very tender and gentle look, so that it was not difficult to guess the state of his feelings towards the girl at his side.  His shoulders were broad, his chest deep, and his whole build powerful in the extreme, and Dunn, looking him up and down with the quick glance of one accustomed to judge men, thought that he had seldom seen one more capable of holding his own.

Answering his companion’s remark, he said lightly: 

“Oh, no, I shall cut across the wood, it’s ever so much shorter, you know.”

“But it’s so dark and lonely,” the girl protested.  “And then, after last week—­”

He interrupted her with a laugh, and he lifted his head with a certain not unpleasing swagger.

“I don’t think they’ll trouble me for all their threats,” he said.  “For that matter, I rather hope they will try something of the sort on.  They need a lesson.”