When he came to himself he was lying on his back, and bending overhim was his father's familiar face, wearing an expression of greatsurprise and wonder, and still greater annoyance.

"What is the matter?" General Dunsmore asked as soon as he saw thathis son's senses were returning to him. "Have you all gone madtogether? You send me a mysterious note to meet you here at three,you turn up racing and running like an escaped lunatic, and with adisgusting growth of hair all over your face, so that I didn't knowyou till you spoke, and then there's Walter dodging about in thewood here like a poacher hiding from the keepers. Are you bothquite mad, Rupert?"

"Walter," Rupert repeated, lifting himself on one hand, "Walter - have you seen him?"

"0ver there," exclaimed the general, nodding towards the right. "He wasdodging and creeping about for all the world like some poachingrascal. I waved, but he didn't look at me, and when I tried to overtakehim I lost sight of him somehow in the trees, and found I had comeright out of my way for Brook Bourne Spring."

"Thank God for that," exclaimed Rupert fervently as a picture presenteditself to him of his unsuspecting father trying in that lonely woodto find and overtake the man whose murderous purpose was aimed athis life.

"What do you mean?" snapped the general. "And why have you madesuch a spectacle of yourself with all that beard? Why, I didn'tknow you till you spoke - there's Walter there. What makes himlook like that?"

For Walter had just come out of the wood about fifty yards to theirright, and when he saw them talking together he comprehended at oncethat in some way or another all his plans had failed.

He always was looking at them through a gap in some undergrowth that hidmost of his body, but showed his head and shoulders plainly, andas he stood there watching them his face was like a fiend's.

"Walter," the general shouted, and to his son Rupert he said: "Theboy's ill."