you, Mr. Bludward," he shouted; "you'll come out on top! We'll

break old Chobham's neck for him."
"Who was that man?" asked Alethia quickly.

"Oh, one of my supporters," laughed Robert; "a bit of a poacher and
a bit of a pub-loafer, but he's on the right side."

So these were the sort of associates that Robert Bludward consorted
with, thought Alethia.

"Who is the person he referred to as old Chobham?" she asked.
"Sir John Chobham, the man who is opposing me," answered Robert;

"that is his house away there among the trees on the right."
So there was an upright man, possibly a very Hugo in character, who

was thwarting and defying the evildoer in his nefarious career, and
there was a dastardly plot afoot to break his neck! Possibly the

attempt would be made within the next few hours. He must certainly
be warned. Alethia remembered how Lady Sylvia Broomgate, in

Nightshade Court, had pretended to be bolted with by her horse up to
the front door of a threatened county magnate, and had whispered a

warning in his ear which saved him from being the victim of foul
murder. She wondered if there was a quiet pony in the stables on

which she would be allowed to ride out alone. The chances were that
she would be watched. Robert would come spurring after her and

seize her bridle just as she was turning in at Sir John's gates.
A group of men that they passed in a village street gave them no

very friendly looks, and Alethia thought she heard a furtive hiss; a
moment later they came upon an errand boy riding a bicycle. He had

the frank open countenance, neatly brushed hair and tidy clothes
that betoken a clear conscience and a good mother. He stared

straight at the occupants of the car, and, after he had passed them,
sang in his clear, boyish voice:

"We'll hang Bobby Bludward on the sour apple tree."
Robert merely laughed. That was how he took the scorn and

condemnation of his fellow-men. He had goaded them to desperation
with his shameless depravity till they spoke openly of putting him

to a violent death, and he laughed.
Mrs. Bludward proved to be of the type that Alethia had suspected,

thin-lipped, cold-eyed, and obviouslydevoted to her worthless son.
From her no help was to be expected. Alethia locked her door that

night, and placed such ramparts of furniture against it that the
maid had great difficulty in breaking in with the early tea in the

morning.
After breakfast Alethia, on the pretext of going to look at an

outlying rose-garden, slipped away to the village through which they
had passed on the previous evening. She remembered that Robert had

pointed out to her a public reading-room, and here she considered it
possible that she might meet Sir John Chobham, or some one who knew

him well and would carry a message to him. The room was empty when
she entered it; a Graphic twelve days old, a yet older copy of

Punch, and one or two local papers lay upon the central table; the
other tables were stacked for the most part with chess and draughts-

boards, and wooden boxes of chessmen and dominoes. Listlessly she
picked up one of the papers, the Sentinel, and glanced at its

contents. Suddenly she started, and began to read with breathless
attention a prominently printed article, headed "A Little Limelight

on Sir John Chobham." The colour ebbed away from her face, a look
of frightened despair crept into her eyes. Never, in any novel that

she had read, had a defenceless young woman been confronted with a
situation like this. Sir John, the Hugo of her imagination, was, if

anything, rather more depraved and despicable than Robert Bludward.
He was mean, evasive, callously indifferent to his country's

interests, a cheat, a man who habitually broke his word, and who was
responsible, with his associates, for most of the poverty, misery,

crime, and national degradation with which the country was
afflicted. He was also a candidate for Parliament, it seemed, and

as there was only one seat in this particular locality, it was
obvious that the success of either Robert or Sir John would mean a

check to the ambitions of the other, hence, no doubt, the rivalry
and enmity between these otherwisekindred souls. One was seeking

to have his enemy done to death, the other was apparentlytrying to
stir up his supporters to an act of "Lynch law". All this in order

that there might be an unopposed election, that one or other of the
candidates might go into Parliament with honeyed eloquence on his

lips and blood on his heart. Were men really so vile?
"I must go back to Webblehinton at once," Alethia informed her

astonished hostess at lunch time; "I have had a telegram. A friend
is very seriously ill and I have been sent for."

It was dreadful to have to concoct lies, but it would be more
dreadful to have to spend another night under that roof.

Alethia reads novels now with even greater appreciation than before.
She has been herself in the world outside Webblehinton, the world

where the great dramas of sin and villainy are played unceasingly.
She had come unscathed through it, but what might have happened if

she had gone unsuspectingly to visit Sir John Chobham and warn him
of his danger? What indeed! She had been saved by the fearless

outspokenness of the local Press.
THE INTERLOPERS

In a forest of mixed growth somewhere on the eastern spurs of the
Karpathians, a man stood one winter night watching and listening, as

though he waited for some beast of the woods to come within the
range of his vision, and, later, of his rifle. But the game for

whose presence he kept so keen an outlook was none that figured in
the sportsman's calendar as lawful and proper for the chase; Ulrich

von Gradwitz patrolled the dark forest in quest of a human enemy.
The forest lands of Gradwitz were of wide extent and well stocked

with game; the narrow strip of precipitous woodland that lay on its
outskirt was not remarkable for the game it harboured or the

shooting it afforded, but it was the most jealously guarded of all
its owner's territorial possessions. A famous law suit, in the days

of his grandfather, had wrested it from the illegal possession of a
neighbouring family of petty landowners; the dispossessed party had

never acquiesced in the judgment of the Courts, and a long series of
poaching affrays and similar scandals had embittered the

relationships between the families for three generations. The
neighbour feud had grown into a personal one since Ulrich had come

to be head of his family; if there was a man in the world whom he
detested and wished ill to it was Georg Znaeym, the inheritor of the

quarrel and the tireless game-snatcher and raider of the disputed
border-forest. The feud might, perhaps, have died down or been

compromised if the personal ill-will of the two men had not stood in
the way; as boys they had thirsted for one another's blood, as men

each prayed that misfortune might fall on the other, and this wind-
scourged winter night Ulrich had banded together his foresters to

watch the dark forest, not in quest of four-footed quarry, but to
keep a look-out for the prowling thieves whom he suspected of being

afoot from across the land boundary. The roebuck, which usually
kept in the sheltered hollows during a storm-wind, were running like

driven things to-night, and there was movement and unrest among the
creatures that were wont to sleep through the dark hours. Assuredly

there was a disturbing element in the forest, and Ulrich could guess
the quarter from whence it came.

He strayed away by himself from the watchers whom he had placed in
ambush on the crest of the hill, and wandered far down the steep

slopes amid the wild tangle of undergrowth, peering through the tree
trunks and listening through the whistling and skirling of the wind

and the restlessbeating of the branches for sight and sound of the
marauders. If only on this wild night, in this dark, lone spot, he

might come across Georg Znaeym, man to man, with none to witness--
that was the wish that was uppermost in his thoughts. And as he

stepped round the trunk of a huge beech he came face to face with
the man he sought.

The two enemies stood glaring at one another for a long silent