*Confidences in "the Cave"*

A journey to Salterne next day was out of the question, because the
weather had taken the bit between its teeth and was behaving badly.
This happens so often after a thunderstorm that nobody was surprised;
everyone simply looked out for something to do.  Adrian plunged with
vigour into a brief spell of mowing.  It seemed wise to grapple with the
rapidly growing grass while there was nothing better on hand.
Christobel, feeling uneasy, sought an opportunity for private
conversation with her sister.  She was uneasy, because she believed it
was somehow all right--though it looked all wrong--and she didn’t know
how to begin.

Pamela was alone in the library, sitting in the biggest leather chair
after a style of her own, that is, inside the chair with her long slim
legs hanging over the arm, and her knees forming a satisfactory rest for
the inevitable book.

Christobel entered on this scene of peaceful comfort with a direct
question, after her way:

"Oh, Pam, there you are.  I rather wanted to ask you something."

She shut the door, and came forward to take a seat on the edge of the
writing-table, near the big chair.

Pamela glanced at her and detected mystery.  She did not say so, though,
but let her gaze rest again on the interesting page and murmured:

"All right.  Fire away."

"You don’t mind my asking, Pam, but did Mother send you out--send you
anywhere--last night?"

The inquiry was made awkwardly.  Crow flushed rather pink.

"How do you mean?"

Pamela’s intent blue gaze was raised, and she looked curiously at her
sister’s face.

"How do you mean ’send me out’, Crow?"

"Well, is there any mystery about it?"

"About what?"

"About you being out last evening?"

Pamela remained silent for quite a minute; she was reviewing swiftly in
her mind what the time was when she had returned from Woodrising--after
her ineffective search-visit. Eight o’clock!  She was back before eight,
of course, because supper was timed for eight and she was in--with a
brief period for dressing.

After that pause she answered:

"I don’t know what you are driving at, my dear Crow."

But of course Christobel had noticed the hesitation.  It made her feel
rather stronger.

"Do you mind telling me when you did come in, Pam? I ask for a reason."

"Well, if you seriously want to know," answered the younger girl rather
stiffly, "I was in just in time to change for supper--and supper was at
eight o’clock--later than usual.  That was because Mum had put the food
back thinking you and Addie would be home."

"Ten to _eight_?"

"Well, why not?  It was nearly dark, but the moon had begun--besides,
we’d been mewed up indoors an awful lot with the rain."

Pamela was throwing out little feelers of excuse--as it were--for her
wanderings round Woodrising, in case she had been seen.  Somebody had
told Christobel something, she believed firmly, and her defensive
instinct made her rather stiff.

"Well, _I_ was meaning about ten minutes to _ten_--not eight," said the
elder girl.

They looked at each other searchingly.

"I was in bed before that," said Pamela.  "I don’t know the least what
you are talking about, Crow, but you seem to have a lively maggot in
your brain about me."

"It isn’t anything in my brain--it’s a question of the eyesight of two
people."

"Who’s the other person?"

"Addie.  We both saw you----"

"Oh dear," ejaculated Pamela in an exasperated voice, "do you mean to
say you think you saw me out of doors just before ten o’clock, because
you may as well disabuse your mind of the idea at once.  Addie doesn’t
count, he leaps to conclusions.  He’d say the Little Pilgrim was me for
two pins, and believe it if he was in an imaginative mood. Well, you did
_not_ see me, Crow."

"My dear girl, I’m awfully sorry you feel vexed about it."

"Wouldn’t you be vexed, if people practically told you you were telling
lies," said Pamela, fingering the pages of her book with unsettled
fingers.

"I don’t.  I assure you I don’t," said Christobel urgently "but please
do look at our side of the question.  Now listen, Pam.  We got in to
Five Trees about 9.25, we came straight along with a moon as bright as
day, and just before we came to Folly Ho corner we heard some one
running.  _I_ thought it sounded like a girl--unless it was a boy in
running shoes--the feet were so light.  Of course we were
interested--down past the little grass patch at the crossroad came
_you_----"

Pamela made a gesture of speaking.

"All right, then," went on Crow, "not you--a girl so exactly like you
that there was no difference.  She had a dark skirt and jumper--like
yours--it was most certainly blue--lighter stockings and shoes--I mean
not black.  She had no hat on, and a heavy tail of plaited hair hanging
down.  As she ran I saw it swing--like yours does.  Now, are you
surprised we thought it was you?"

"What did you do?" asked Pamela.

"Simply stared.  Then Addie gave a whistle shriek, fearfully loud.  She
stopped and looked over her shoulder, then she ran on.  Honestly I admit
we were savage.  Just consider, Pam; it appeared to be you beyond
question, and we naturally concluded you were just out for the fun of
it, and didn’t want us to see you.  Of course it looked as though you
didn’t mean to stop on purpose."

"Funny," allowed Pamela in a milder tone, "well, what did you do next?
I suppose you saw where this very surprising girl went to?"

Christobel felt this was the weak part of her story, but she told it
conscientiously.

"I see.  So the girl was swallowed up by the cloud! Are you sure you
ever saw her at all, Crow?"

"Never was so sure of a thing in my life," declared Christobel, slipping
off the table edge, and going to the window-seat, where she took a more
comfortable seat, "we saw the girl.  Who she is, I don’t pretend to say,
as you say she is not you.  It was just in that bit of road outside
Woodrising that we lost sight of her.  Thinking she was surely you I
made Addie go into Fuchsia Cottage and ask Miss Lasarge."

"Why--on earth?" demanded Pamela, with a little frown of annoyance, as
she shut her book smartly.

"Why?  Because I thought you’d gone in there.  It was the only way to
account for your disappearance."

"For _hers_, you mean."

"Yes; of course.  Only, remember we were certain it was you then."

"What did the Little Pilgrim say?" asked Pamela, with an accession of
interest, as she pulled herself up in the chair, swinging her slim feet
rather restlessly.

"Oh, nothing much.  She just listened, and said you weren’t there, and
you hadn’t been, and she was sure it couldn’t be you--that was all.  We
thought she seemed rather nervous--rather sort of hesitating--but it
might have been our fancy.  You see, Pam, I was so sure it couldn’t be
anyone but you, that I had a feeling the Little Pilgrim thought it was,
but meant to hold her tongue.  She’s such a little angel of kindness
she’d always shield anybody she thought might be risking a fuss."

"I daresay," allowed Pamela in a non-committal way; then she added,
"well, are you satisfied now, Crow?  I can only tell you again that I
was in bed--at that time."

"My dear old girl, if you say you were not the person we saw, there’s an
end," answered Christobel warmly, yet even as she spoke she was faintly
uneasy--Pamela was keeping something back.  She was sure.  However,
there was no more to be said.  She changed the subject.

"Addie’s bathing," she said, "he loves bathing in the rain, and at the
present moment it is pouring anchors and marlinespikes--where’s Hughie?"

Pamela was just going to say where she thought Hughie was, but changed
the information to a vague:

"Oh--somewhere.  You’re not going to fetch the yawl back to-day then,
Crow?"

Christobel said the tide would serve much better in the afternoon a bit
later.  It could be done now, but they would have to be home by five
o’clock, or they’d have the whole weight of the ebb against them.

"Better to have an hour or so to spare," she added cheerfully and went
out.

Pamela remained sitting in her nest, swinging her feet and
thinking--thinking.  "Then there was something in Mollie’s and Hughie’s
accusation."  She had come away yesterday from her venture at Woodrising
persuaded that the whole thing was "tosh"--that Sir Marmaduke had kindly
given a lift to Mrs. Chipman for old time’s sake--being in the
neighbourhood himself, perhaps for business reasons.  It was so natural
that Mrs. Chipman should pay a visit to Mrs. Trewby, for they were
acquaintances of old days.

Last night, before she fell asleep, she felt assured that both Mollie
and Hughie had made a mistake somehow--unlikely as it seemed.  Now, the
whole thing was awake again, and positively demanding attention.  Poor
Pamela felt the least bit gloomy about it; first, because she had read
somewhere that if a person has a "double" in the world they are sure to
die promptly; secondly, because she was becoming a butt for false
accusations on all sides.  She felt instinctively that Crow, her best
friend, was a little suspicious, and Addie, of course, would be frankly
sceptical.  Only Hughie believed her.  Hughie was a very wise person,
not to be despised as a partner in difficulty.

She slipped to her feet, and left the room, ran upstairs, and stood
quietly listening at the top of the back stairs.  No one was about.  The
voice of Mrs. Jeep conversing profoundly with Keziah, the house
parlour-maid, was the only sound audible.  The wide front stairs mounted
from the hall into the long corridor, and were not used by servants. The
backstairs came up from the kitchen passage to a lobby shut off by a
green baize door, and went on upwards to the attics, which were large
and charming rooms, with many cupboards, and the most perfect views in
the house, out of quaint dormer windows.

There were four at least and wide passage space also.

Mrs. Jeep owned one; Keziah and Patty Ingles the between-maid shared
another.  One was a spare room for chance servant visitors, and the end
one over Pamela’s and Hughie’s rooms was what is called a "box" room.
Here was "luggage"--big, old-fashioned trunks, leather portmanteaux,
large hat boxes.  Neat piles of cardboard boxes--the sort that drapers
and dressmakers send out--all sizes, and tidy stacks of brown
paper--sacking--cords--all the odds and ends necessary for packing of
any kind.  There were chairs with burst cane seats, and baths needing
paint, cans that leaked, and baskets damaged in various ways--these had
waited through the war to be mended, and waited still for workers; Mrs.
Romilly was a most methodical, tidy person and detested waste.

Besides all this was the old nursery property of "dressing-up"
chests--clothes for charades in winter--a rocking-horse, and the dolls’
houses; the thousand-and-one things that belong to a family of children.

Hughie loved it all with a deep and faithful love.  Secretly he played
with the dolls’ houses, and set the small china-headed dolls round the
loaded tables for their silent meals with affectionate care.  Pamela
knew all about these matters, but she was far too loyal to betray the
secret.

When she came into this big chamber of treasure trove she stood still
and looked round.  The fact that nobody was visible did not convince her
that nobody was there.

"Hullo!" she said in a low voice.

"Hullo!" returned a small voice in an absorbed tone.

Pamela crossed the room and looked over a barricade of lumber.  At first
sight it seemed that a heavy oak dower chest, topped by a pile of boxes,
was set against the wall.  It was not.  Between its bulk and the wall of
the attic there existed a narrow space--so narrow that it would not
appear possible as a retiring place even for the smallest boy.

Pamela looked over--as has been stated--and dropped a small paper bag.

"I brought you some chocolates," she said.

"Thanks," murmured Hughie in a slow drawl.  Squeezed between the chest
and the wall he was absorbed in most intricate stitchery.  On his knee
was set a cardboard box full of bits and scraps--both white and
coloured--wee spars, small lengths of catgut, bits of fine wire.  Also,
sitting very upright, two neatly smiling dolls, with bran-stuffed bodies
and china heads, dolls about three inches long--the large kind held no
attractions for Hughie.

"How are you getting on, Midget?" asked Pamela with sympathy.

"It’s rather trying," said the dressmaker, "their arm-sleeves fray out
of the holes, and the button-holes are simply fearful.  But they must
have the things."

"They’ll look jolly nice when they are finished," said Pamela, "can’t I
help you?"

Hughie rejected help.

"I’ve made a white ensign for the new boat," he said, nodding towards
the tiny flag that lay finished on the box-top.

"Ripping!" exclaimed Pamela, picking up the bit of work. It was most
beautifully made.  Seeing her undoubted admiration Hughie fished out of
his coloured heap a fine cord to which were attached a succession of
wonderful little flags and burgees in many colours and designs.

"Signal halyards," he said, "it took me weeks--and months.  It’s the
whole code."

"Hughie, you are rather surprising," said Pamela, as she examined the
extraordinary result of skill and patience. Then she pushed the boxes a
little to one side and seated herself on the corner of the oak chest.

"I rather wanted to tell you something," she began.

"I know," said Hughie, adding as she paused in surprise, "is it about
the pig-tail girl?"

Pamela told him what had happened, and what Christobel had asked her.

Hughie made no comment.

"I wish they hadn’t gone to Fuchsia Cottage and asked Miss Anne about
it," went on Pamela thoughtfully, "the more people who are dragged into
it, the more bother it will be to----"

"To what?" inquired Hughie, without looking up.

"Well, I was going to say--to find out.  Then I remembered that probably
there isn’t anything to find out.  I mean, if there is a girl she is
probably a relation of Mrs. Trewby’s."

"I suppose you think she lives at Woodrising?" suggested Hughie
cautiously.

"Crow said she disappeared just outside that wall--when a cloud made it
dark.  _They_ thought she’d run on into Fuchsia Cottage gate--you see."

"I know.  It was the other gate more likely," said Hughie in a
deliberate manner.

"Well, I daresay.  I don’t see where else she can be living.  But what I
mean is, Hughie, that it’s not exciting. I thought I’d just try and find
tracks--or something definite--so I went all round Woodrising yesterday
evening.  One can’t get in; besides, I hadn’t the cheek to go and ring
at the gate-bell and say ’Have you a girl like me anywhere about?’  I
couldn’t do it, so I just----"

"Scouted," suggested Hughie, as he threaded a fine needle with silk with
a view to button-holes, "you got it out of your Scout book."

Pamela coloured faintly.

"I rather tried to do as they say in the Rules, but there weren’t any
tracks outside.  Then I got over the end wall; there was a ladder
against it outside, and I’m perfectly certain Peter Cherry uses it for a
short cut.  Inside there was a manure heap--not a smelly one--straw
chiefly for marrows--so there was a good place to jump into.  The garden
was appallingly wet; and you never saw anything like the bushes,
Midget--one mass.  I saw Peter’s bootmarks as plain as a house--and then
I found nice narrow shoes like mine, and made sure I’d got a clue, but
it occurred to me that they might easily be my own feet!  I’d been going
up and down, and in and out--such a lot of paths and all so much
alike----"

"Next time I’d put a trail of pebbles if I were you," suggested Hughie.

"You mean like Hop-of-my-thumb did, when he found the birds ate his
bread-crumbs?"

"Or," said Hughie, pausing in his work, "you could blaze a trail on the
bushes.  That’s easy enough--tiny little breaks in the twigs--and leaves
stuck on the ends of them.  I would."

"Yes," agreed Pamela thoughtfully, "if I go again I will. Well, anyway I
had to hide, because two women came from the house and went to the end
of the garden.  One was Mrs. Trewby--looking as yellow as marmalade--and
the other was that maid Baker.  Lady Shard had her for years, and she
married the London butler.  Her name is Mrs. Chipman now.  Do you
remember her, Midget?"

"She came to tea with Mrs. Jeep when she was dressed in black.  I hated
her," said Hughie, "she says silly things to people about being
mischievous.  She calls it ’mischeevious’.  She doesn’t understand
anything."

"She’d talk the hind leg off a donkey," said Pamela with contempt.  "I
should think the butler was very thankful when he died and could get
away from her voice--it clacks.  I couldn’t remember her at first, and I
was so busy remembering that I forgot to notice what she said--it was
all about people, though--you know how that kind of person talks.  They
went back past me to the house, and then the Chipman female began
shouting for her dog, and I was so fearfully afraid of being caught that
I fled along the path over the wall and came home."

"How did you know she was calling the dog?" asked Hughie, opening the
paper bag and looking into it with interest.  "How do you know she
wasn’t calling the other girl?"

"Couldn’t have been; she called ’Countess, Countess, Countess’, just how
people call dogs, and that sort of person usually call dogs by that kind
of name; and the dogs are usually big, fluffy ones which never do what
they’re told.  Oh, it was a dog right enough, I’m sure.  Well, that’s
all.  It isn’t a very bright prospect is it, Midget?"

"Not very," allowed Hughie; "what time is it, Pam?"

Pamela, consulting a wristlet watch, said it was about twelve.  It must
be, she concluded, because her watch was a quarter to one.  "I calculate
it to be over half an hour fast towards the end of the week," she told
him, "then I begin fresh on Sundays.  It’s a bother, because you forget
and are sure to be late for breakfast.  However, it can’t be helped."

"Don’t tell anybody I’m here," Hughie requested, finishing the chocolate
and smoothing out the bag.  Paper bags came in usefully at times.

"Not Mother, do you mean?  She may ask."

"I don’t mind her, but not the others, Pam.  It’s impossible to sew
properly when people come bothering about and asking questions."

Pamela promised, and departed light-footed.

In the corridor she met her mother, who promptly asked where was her
youngest son.

"He’s all right, Mummy--sewing, in the cave," said Pamela, "and he
doesn’t want anyone to know."

"All right.  _I_ shan’t tell," said Mrs. Romilly, smiling. Then she
asked about the yawl, and the plans of the older pair about fetching her
from Salterne.

Pamela related what she knew, so far as it went.  In a day or two the
tide would serve better, as there would be a later ebb in the afternoon.

"The fact is, Miss Chance would rather like to make a shopping
expedition to Salterne the same day--and couldn’t she come back in the
boat?" asked Mrs. Romilly, innocent of all this involved--as mothers so
often are.

The silence that ensued was so full of meaning, that Mrs. Romilly
answered it as though her daughter had spoken.

"I think, darling child, that you ought--all of you--to make things as
nice for Miss Chance as you can.  There are no regular lessons just now,
because of Addie being sent home, and Crow finishing up at Easter;
besides, it will soon be Whitsuntide now; but I think we ought to try
and make it as pleasant for her as possible, don’t you?  She is always
most kind."

"Oh, yes, awfully kind," agreed Pamela hastily, "but Mother, are you
sure she likes going on the yawl?  You know she’d be rather a
responsibility for Addie and Crow; she doesn’t understand a boat, she
stands on the gunwale and expects the boat to wait as if it were a stone
step!  She truly might get drowned rather easily, you know, and what
_could_ they do, if she fell overboard?"

"I see," murmured Mrs. Romilly thoughtfully, "yes, I see.  Well, she
might come back by train.  I’ll talk to her about it.  At the same time,
if she really wishes to go by sea, I’m sure it will be all right."

To this Pamela said nothing, but she formed an inward resolve that she
would have nothing to do with this expedition.

                             *CHAPTER VIII*

                   *"Little Friend of all the World"*

On a certain evening, a couple of days or so after this, the sky cleared
beautifully, and the sun went down with grand promise of fine weather
again.

Miss Chance was correcting French exercises in the library when Adrian
and Christobel entered, very hot and triumphant--the Bell House lawns
were mown to perfection, and to-morrow would suit in all ways for the
fetching back of the yawl.

"It must be done to-morrow," Adrian threw himself with a crash on the
springy sofa, "_must_ be--we can’t leave the _Messenger_ at Salterne any
longer.  She must be on her moorings by this time to-morrow."

"I hope you will have a fine day, then," said Miss Chance, placing
papers aside in a neat heap, "you had a terrible storm the day of your
last expedition--terrible.  I always think though that thunder and
lightning and such terrors must be sent for some good purpose--to teach
us something."

"They teach you not to leave your oilskins behind," suggested Adrian
from the floor.

"Oh, hush, dear boy--is that quite nice?" said the excellent woman in a
shocked voice--and then changing the subject with rather laboured
vivacity she went on:

"Really I wish dear Pam would concentrate more.  She is having so few
lessons now that she ought to be giving of her very best.  One would
think her mind was entirely distracted.  I told her so, and her reply
was _most_ unconvincing--she said if she had twelve times as much to do
she would do it twelve times as well!  Most unreasoning."

"I don’t agree with you, my dear Floweret," said Adrian, "I agree with
Pam.  If you are in for a fearful grind--well, there you are--you grind;
you get acclimatized, so to speak, like people living on the west coast
of Africa.  After a bit you thrive on the beastly thing--in fact revel
in it. Whereas if you make a snatch at it--well, there’s a hopeless
failure."

Good Miss Chance gave a crackling laugh; she was devoted to Adrian,
especially when he slapped her on the back and called her the Floweret,
or "my good Blossom"--in cheerful allusion to her pretty name.  She
plunged into argument with zest therefore.

"The west coast of Africa," she said, "is not nearly so subject to
pestilence and dangerous malaria as it used to be.  Advancing science
has taught us how to deal with these things--and what has it to do with
French exercises! I am sure you cannot be thinking reasonably.  What
else can be expected from your position, which is exactly the opposite
to what was intended for the use of a sofa."

"I know," said Adrian, "I am aware of that, Miss Chance. But I never was
a Conservative.  My opinions might be classified as
Republican-Imperialist.  Let me reason with you.  If the legs are on the
sofa, and the head is on the floor, blood flows freely to the brain, and
it swells with astonishing rapidity.  Result, a vigorous crop of ideas.
I’m full of them at this moment--my brain is, that’s to say.  They are
sprouting so rapidly that I shall be able to impart to you information
on many subjects in a brace of jiffs."

Miss Chance was about to plunge into further depths, when Christobel
intervened politely.

"Don’t listen to him, Miss Chance, he is talking the worst kind of
piffle--suppose we go to bed.  Addie, get up, your head was never
intended for a carpet-cleaner. Come along and say good-night to Mum,
she’s gone up because she had a headache."

Crow stood up and stretched.  Adrian, after a violent effort to get on
to the sofa by muscular effort alone, came on to his feet in the
ordinary way, and proceeded to shake himself into his garments with some
regard to appearance.

"Now I wonder," said Miss Chance, gathering all her properties into
order, and replacing some in drawers, "I wonder whether you two would
give _me_ a lift to-morrow. I want a day’s shopping in Salterne, or some
hours anyway--why shouldn’t I go in with you--and sail out?"

There was one short pause strenuous with meaning! Then Crow, as usual,
met the difficulty.

"If you want to shop, Miss Chance, it wouldn’t fit in, you see we should
have to go to the harbour and get the yawl out--and home.  I am sorry,
but really it would be difficult to get time for shopping, wouldn’t it,
Addie?"

"Well, well, we will discuss the matter in the morning," said Miss
Chance, not in the least offended.  She certainly was a "goodhearted
soul," as Crow impressed on Adrian going upstairs.

"She may be," he declared desperately, "but her good heart won’t be much
use in the boat.  She’ll most likely be drowned, and we shall be
responsible."

The depths of gloom are speedily reached.

Mrs. Romilly was sitting in an arm-chair before a little fire.  She said
she was cold after all that rain.  She was dressed in a loose gown of
the colour matching her eyes, and her lovely hair--just like
Pamela’s--was hanging round her like a shawl.

"I’ll brush that," said Christobel firmly.

Adrian sat down on the fender-stool with his back to the fire and looked
dejected.

"Is your head bad--or better, Mummy, dear?" asked Christobel, proceeding
to the business of brushing.  "Addie and I have been talking to Miss
Chance, or we should have come sooner."

Mrs. Romilly said her head was better, also that she was very pleased
they’d been talking to Miss Chance; finally she wanted to know if
anything had been said about the sail from Salterne.

"If you go, and when you go," she concluded, "she wants to go in with
you--walk to Five Trees, I mean, and sail home."

"I don’t think she’ll enjoy it much, Mother," ventured Christobel.

"Why not, dear--_you_ do?"

"Yes, but you see we don’t mind knocking about, and wet, and spells of
discomfort--she might be sick, most people are."

Mrs. Romilly was not blind to the trend of feeling.

"I don’t see why she shouldn’t have a try," she suggested mildly, "if
she is ill, or hates it, she needn’t go again.  After all, poor thing,
she never has been."

"Well, Mother, you see it was Sir Marmaduke’s affair before this, wasn’t
it?  And such a crowd with Penberthy and Mollie--as he didn’t ask Miss
Chance, we couldn’t force her in, could we?"

"Well, there won’t be a crowd now," persisted Mrs. Romilly, "even if you
all go--only five."

"Only five!"  Christobel looked at Adrian over her mother’s head, she
said the two words with her lips--soundlessly--and smiled.

But Adrian would not smile.

"If she’d been with us the other day, in the thunderstorm, she wouldn’t
have wanted to go again," said the boy darkly, "she’d have been in
fits."

"But, darling, I thought you said it was lovely?" this, from his mother
in an expostulating voice.

Christobel warned, with raised eyebrows, and headshakes.

"So it was when the storm was over," said Adrian, refusing to see the
signals, "but she wouldn’t have enjoyed the process of working through
it.  Of course we did," he added quickly, "we enjoy anything, no matter
how beastly--but when it comes to being drenched, and battered, and
shaken up, Miss Chance mightn’t.  And you see, Mum, we can’t put her
ashore--that’s flat.  If she comes, she must come.  I can’t undertake to
land people."

"You landed Hughie one day."

"That was a dead calm."

"Well, but supposing there is a calm to-morrow?"

"If there is we shall go straight back to Salterne, that’s all--and
sleep on the boat," announced Adrian desperately; "surely Miss Chance
would find it pretty uncomfortable to have to sleep on the yawl with
four other people, and not even a toothbrush among the lot."

The unfortunate part of this episode was that it did not achieve its
object, but only succeeded in making Mrs. Romilly firmer on the
contested point.  She did not believe in the discomforts Adrian had
mentioned--which were perfectly true, of course--because they had been
kept from her before.

She thought the young ones did not want Miss Chance to go--they
certainly did not, but the reasons put forward were strictly facts.

She was sweet and sympathetic, but her mind was made up.

"Please make it as nice and easy for her as possible, dear children,"
she said; "I depend on you, Crow; after all she has never yet been on
the yacht."

There was no more to be said of course.  Christobel gave way without
another word.  Adrian was silent, but when they were saying "good-night"
he suggested quite amiably:

"We’ll give the Floweret as good a time as we know how, Mum, and by the
way, it’s only fair to remember it isn’t our fault she’s never been out
in the _Messenger_--she’s always been away in the holidays when we did
all the sailing--and Sir Marmaduke was here."

Mrs. Romilly protested that she knew all this.  The yawl had never been
at their service in term-time before--Adrian being absent.

"Perhaps this is the beginning of good times," she said; "perhaps she
will make a first-rate sailor."

Brother and sister looked at each other speechless, when they got
outside.  Then Crow whispered:

"Are we downhearted?" and sped away to her room, head turned over her
shoulder with her lips forming a very decided "No--o--o."

Adrian stood at his window presently looking out at the sweet breathless
night.  There was no air, the stars were clear.  "If it’s a calm she’ll
be sick," he thought, "poor old Blossom"--and peace descended on his
soul.

So the matter was settled, and, in order to give Miss Chance time for
her shopping, the young Romillys went by an earlier train from Five
Trees.  They did not mind that at all.  Adrian wanted to get to his
beloved _Messenger_--the sooner the better.

The party consisted of four--because Hughie was included.  Pamela simply
declined.  She wouldn’t say why or wherefore.  She looked at the others
during breakfast remarking that four was an even number.

"All agog to dash through thick and thin," she murmured, "Crow can shop
with Miss Chance and Hughie can go with Addie to the yawl.  Three people
jostling each other in front of shop windows is never comfortable, and I
hate sitting on a hot deck at anchor.  Home is nicer."

They all went off gaily, Miss Chance carrying a string bag besides her
bag-purse, to Crow’s annoyance.  She could not bear "walking with a
string bag," she said. However Miss Chance could not be parted from it.
The necessary food was to be bought in Salterne, and they were to start
back after lunch, and come home with the tide.

It sounded perfectly charming, not a hitch.  Mrs. Romilly was well
pleased.  She and Pamela had lunch together, and the peace of the house
was balm.  The day held fine--very fine.  About two o’clock there was
about as much air as you would expect under a vacuum bell.

Pamela called her mother’s attention to it.

"Oh, I expect they’ve got some wind even if we haven’t," said Mrs.
Romilly; "I shan’t worry, and, Pam dear, tea at half-past four, for you
and me--and after that will you go up to Clawtol and get some eggs from
Mrs. Ensor?  A dozen or two dozen even--we eat such a lot now Addie has
taken to demanding hard-boiled ones for the yacht.  If I can’t get
enough from Clawtol, we must try the Badgers at Champles to-morrow or
next day."

Pamela did not mind in the least.  She had a plan in fact.  Why not come
back by Woodrising?  A basket of eggs would prove her business.  She
need not do anything--at the same time she felt she could not rest till
she obtained some knowledge of her "double".  Having settled that the
girl did not exist, she had been shaken out of that security by
Christobel’s surprising questions and confusion of her identity.  It was
not possible to pass it over.  Fate had sent her another free day, clear
of "family"; she must have one more attempt at Woodrising.

She and her mother followed the thought of _Messenger’s_ return with
interest.

"If there had been a good wind they might have reached the lighthouse by
now," said Pamela, spreading her bread and butter with a thankful heart,
"as it is----"

"What?  ’As it _is_’" asked Mrs. Romilly.

"Well, Mummy dear, no wind.  What can they do? They’ll be coming down
the estuary about now--perhaps crossing the bar.  Miss Chance won’t feel
the swell till they get really out--a good way."

"Are they bound to feel the swell?"

"Mummy, they are.  I can assure you it’s the sort of heaving that makes
one try hard _not_ to think of bacon grease. If you do, you’re sorry."

"Poor Miss Chance," said Mrs. Romilly, and laughed.

Pamela looked at her with eyes that were grey-green--sometimes they were
blue, sometimes grey--it depended on the sky and the atmosphere.

"I’m rather afraid," she remarked, "that a bit of bad luck is coming to
those poor ones.  There is a mist.  You know how it begins.  Bits of
ragged chiffon seem to float past one, going nowhere in particular.
There isn’t a breath of air, and yet a cold kind of draught has
arrived."

"I _am_ sorry," said Mrs. Romilly, with feeling, "but a fog won’t
prevent their getting home.  If they keep close in, the cliffs are so
very obvious."

Pamela made no comment on this; she simply said it certainly would not
prevent her walk to Clawtol for the eggs, while through her mind ran the
idea that nothing could be better than a good thick white mist--such as
they got in perfection at Bell Bay--for her mystery hunting expedition.

She kissed her mother and went, feeling joyous and independent.  Her
plan was cut and dried, so to speak, all settled--and when plans are
like that they are very apt to turn topsy-turvy, and land people where
they least expected to be.

Pamela went the usual way, across the lawns, out by the wicket that led
to the beach, and very slowly up the steep cliff road past Crown Hill
lodge gates and on up to Hawksdown.  A sea fog has the effect of
producing a feeling of loneliness.  It cuts you off, and it makes voices
and distant noises sound different.  She went on till she reached the
summit, and arriving there, went along cautiously towards the cliff
edge, to see if the _Messenger_ might be within sight.

The land on top of the Beak was very wild, desolate even; as it sloped
very slightly downward to the cliff edge it behoved a wanderer to go
cautiously.  The Beak was not perpendicular.  It could be climbed by an
expert, or even an agile, clear-headed person like Pamela, but as she
said to herself, "It was not the sort of thing you’d pick out to do,
unless you had a very strong mood on."

She thought that as she looked over, and out to sea.  No sail was within
her vision.  The water was visible, but through a fluff of thick white
haze, that moved with the ceaseless shift of a kaleidoscope.  Very
dazzling.  It made her giddy to watch the curious floating rags of
it--coming, coming, ever thicker.  If the yawl were close she could not
be seen.

Of course it will be understood that the bluff of a headland is not a
narrow point.  It is a long stretch of wild high land that juts out to
sea.  There are such things as actual peaks sticking out to seaward, but
these are rock, sheer, bare rock, to be found--some at any rate--in the
Channel Islands, where you see most kinds of rocky headland in every
weird shape.

But the Beak on which Pamela stood was a very blunt beak.  The
lighthouse lay perhaps half a mile to the south--invisible from the
top--and Bell Bay was certainly half a mile to the north; all between
was wild cliff trending outward like a huge bent elbow.

Pamela sat down on a gorsy hump, and looked towards Ramsworthy and
Netheroot sands.  She could not see them because of the fog.  Nor could
she see any sail.  It was profoundly lonely, except for the sea-birds
which kept up a constant wailing cry.  They had noticed a human being
appear on the scene, and instantly rose in whity-grey clouds, crying and
screaming, circling round and round uneasily. When nothing happened they
settled down, and presently there was silence again--complete silence
except for one bird, that wailed distressfully at short intervals.  From
the sound, Pamela thought it was young--or very old--or wounded.  It was
not quite like the others.  However, it was impossible to distinguish,
as when it cried all the others rose up and began again.

She sat there perhaps ten minutes, then she went off back to the road,
and presently, at the turning, away down to the farm.

Mrs. Ensor was leaning over the gate with the baby in her arms.  She
greeted Pamela with some satisfaction and said she had plenty of eggs.
They went in together to the dairy, and Mrs. Ensor, putting the baby
down, proceeded to pick out eggs by dates pencilled on them. Meanwhile
she talked.

"Suppose you don’t happen to have met with our Reube--which way did you
come, Missie?"

Pamela explained.

"I’m afraid he’s more like to be Ramsworthy way or, for all that comes
to, Folly Ho.  Mischeevious young monkey he is to be sure," she sighed,
but smiled also with conscious pride in the "mischeevious" one.  "For
ever up to something--and for _looks_, why there--you’d think he only
wanted a pair o’ wings to fly to Heaven."

"He’s a dear little boy," said Pamela, "I like Reuben; he’s only six,
though, isn’t he?"

Mrs. Ensor said he was six, but had "double the years of naughtiness in
him".  It appeared that he had detached himself from the party of
children coming from Ramsworthy school, said he’d got enough dinner left
to do for his tea, and departed all alone.

"There wasn’t one of them with ’thority to make him do as he was told
you see, Missie," said the anxious mother, "he knows I want him for all
sorts.  He’s ever such a help. But there, once in a while off he’ll go;
he never come for his tea, because he know’d I should catch him."

Pamela sympathized secretly with "young Reube". When she said good-bye,
she promised to look out for him, and urge upon him to return home
speedily.  Mrs. Ensor was very grateful.

"That’s a weight off me, Missie," she declared.  "Six ain’t no age when
it comes to that, and these sea mists do seem to worrit anybody, sort of
squeezing you in."

Pamela departed, carrying her eggs carefully, and pursued her way
towards Crown Hill, planning to cut through the park by a foot-track
they were allowed to use, and go down into Bell Bay at the back of the
valley, thus returning via Woodrising "according to plan".  The last
thing she saw of the farmer’s family was a general action, so to speak,
amongst the children and animals in the "muck yard". Into this Mrs.
Ensor dived, dispersing the contending arms, and restoring order.

"I’m glad I shan’t have to be a farmer’s wife," thought Pamela, "it’s
funny how happy they are."  She remembered Reube; then she sat down on a
felled log by the edge of the road to think, for a curious conviction
had awakened in her mind and, as she stopped, seemed to fill every bit
of her brain.  Most people understand that feeling of _certainty_ about
a thing they know nothing about.  It comes of itself and stays.  Nothing
will argue it away, yet there is no reason why it should be there.

Now the conviction that had taken possession of Pamela’s mind was this:

"Young Reube" was in serious trouble on the rugged point of the Beak.
And the queer intermittent cry, that she had noted as distinguished from
the other bird cries, was the despairing voice of the child calling
faintly.

There was no reason at all for this conviction except that Reube had not
come back to tea, yet Pamela was convinced it was exactly as she
pictured.  She sat on for a few minutes thinking.  She did not want to
give up her plan at all.  It was, in fact, a blow--then the danger of
going down the Beak was considerable.  Pam reviewed the idea of going to
Bell Bay and trying to find a man.  There was Major Fraser--he would
have gone, but he was still lame. Adrian would have gone, but he was on
the sea.

Suddenly she remembered that the first duty of a Girl Guide was to help
anyone in distress, danger unconsidered. "Little Friend of all the
World" was the very pith of the whole matter, "Be prepared" the motto,
and secret sign.

Most surely there was only one thing to be done and that was to go and
see, and take immediate action if necessary.

As she came to this conclusion, she straightened her shoulders and sat
upright.  She had been leaning forward with elbows on knees, chin in
hands.  And, as she moved, she heard a noise close by, and looked round.

By the roadside, a little farther down, was an open-front cart-shed, the
sort that has a rickety roof on plank walls and shelters not only carts,
but farm machines of various kinds.  Pamela got up and walked a yard or
two down to look.  It might of course be "young Reube" hiding, which
would clear her difficulties at once.  There was no one in the shed.
She went round the side to the back, called softly,
"Reuben--Reuben--come out, I want to tell you something."  She knew he
would come if he were there. No answer, but a hen walked slowly out from
the bushes clucking.

"Oh, you idiot!" said Pamela, annoyed.  It must have been the hen.  She
walked slowly back to her basket, picked it up, and went off the way she
had come.

                              *CHAPTER IX*

                     *The Strange Adventure of the
                             Curlew’s Call*

Pamela went back steadily the way she had come, and reached the
branching of the road with a full appreciation of the work she had set
herself to do--supposing that "curlew" cry should be the desperate
appeal of poor little Reuben.

The fog was thicker, she could but just see the water at the cliff foot;
sometimes not that, because the mist shifted in patches--unequal
patches.  She sat down to listen, feeling as though she could hear
better so.  Her only guide would be the cry.  Of course her return had
caused a perfect bedlam of dismay among the birds, so she had to wait
till they were reassured; then, when all was still except the
everlasting wash of the water on the rocks, she heard the one wail
again.

Listening for it with a new idea in her mind, she wondered that she had
ever been deceived into thinking it was a curlew.  She tried to place
it, and the stillness of the atmosphere helped her.  A little to the
south of the central point, and down--certainly down.

If Mrs. Romilly could have seen her daughter at that moment she might
have been excused for a nervous collapse.  Pamela looked about for a
safe place in which to dispose of the egg basket, finally planting it
between two sturdy tussocks of coarse grass and heather.  Then she
pulled her little close hat tighter down, shifting the holding pin;
looked to her shoe ties; and started onward slowly down the preliminary
incline.  There was no edge to drop over, instead, a very deceptive
slope, that grew steeper and steeper until it became dangerous.

She fully realized what the child had done, and how he had been led
astray by the apparent easiness of the first part.  Probably some idea
of birds’ eggs had drawn him on--though it was too late in the
season--or it might have been simply adventure.  Pamela thought about it
as she went on, and wondered why he stayed where he was instead of
coming back.  It was likely that he had hurt himself.

One of the dangers of this business was starting too fast. In some ways
a cliff edge to get over would be less of a snare, because you went over
with the full knowledge of your risks.

When she looked back, after perhaps five minutes of cautious descent, it
was astonishing to note how a "cliff" had risen up behind her.  She
seemed to be a long way down, and the height at her back looked
amazingly steep too.  The time was near when she would have to take to
her hands and knees, and crawl--then after a while she would be letting
herself down by rock points, strong grass, and the rugged, uneven
surface of the real cliff--but there were cracks, and little gullies
made by rain and softer soil; these would help.

Every now and then she waited, listening intently, but there was a
longish pause in the crying.  It occurred to her that she might get an
answer by calling--and moreover set at rest any lingering doubt.  She
called:

"Reuben, Reube, Reube--where are you?"  Her voice was clear and pretty,
a sweet voice, the sound of it comforting in a way.

Quickly came an answer on a different note to the despairing wail of the
earlier call.

"Here--Miss----"

The question was very surely decided.  Reuben knew who it was by the
politeness of the "miss"--even in extremity.  He recognized Pamela’s
voice.  But the "here", was rather baffling!  Where was "here"?  She
would have to find out, and anyway she knew it was Reuben, that was all
that mattered much.  Pamela started on down once more.  Down, and along
at the same time, partly because the call suggested it as the right
direction, partly because it was easier.

She had to cross a most horrible slope of burned grass--very steep, yet
smooth.  It gave her some uncommonly ugly moments, but she forced
herself not to look down, and on no account to increase her speed.  She
went by inches, digging her toes and fingers in and resolutely thinking
of Reuben and the business in hand--not of possibilities.

"After this comes a nice broken-up bit," she said aloud, to keep herself
sensible, "when I go up again, I’ll try farther along.  These slippery
bits are no use."

Having reached the nice broken-up bit aforesaid, she cautiously turned
over, and sitting on a big tufty ledge, looked about her.

A little smile flickered round her mouth.

"One in the eye for Addie," she said, "he declared I couldn’t get up or
down the Beak; and it’s worse in a mist."

The mist was distinctly thick now.  So much so that the top of the
headland was out of sight, and the sea was invisible.  She was like a
very lonely bird in the middle of an ocean of drifting film.  Probably
this was what the eagles felt like--high, high up on a rocky peak in the
clouds.  She was not nervous--it was all so very exciting--but it was
important to locate the lost one as soon as possible, because time was
going rather fast.

"Hullo, Reube, call again!" cried Pamela.

There was no answer--there had been no cry, she thought, since the
"miss" in the beginning.  She waited a moment and then tried again.
"Reube--I’m close by--I’m come to help you--where are you?"

All the birds started to shriek and scream with delirious riot.  They
rose in a cloud, and circled round and round. It was maddening.

"Oh you silly idiots," said Pamela.

As the clatter died down into isolated screams, she heard a voice say:

"I bean’t afeard o’ birds, Miss."

"That’s right, Reube," she spoke in a hearty manner, because the words
came in a detached weak tone, as though the speaker made an effort to
say them.

He must be quite close, she thought.

Down she went again, with infinite care, because the surface of
everything was greasy with mist that thickened continually.  Down and
down, and ever the mutter and wash of waves on rock grew more distinct.

Then the voice called, with more life in it.

"Here, Miss!  You do be going too far."

Pamela checked and looked round eagerly.  _Above_ her, but more to the
Ramsworthy side, in the loneliest and most inaccessible bit of the Beak,
was a dark heap, a very little heap; and, small as it was, the great
part of it consisted of a hump of coarse grass.  On the ledge where this
grew clung the human part of the heap.

"_I_ see you," said Pamela, in a cheerful tone.

It was an heroic effort on her part, for, looking at the whole
situation, up, down, and round, it was distinctly terrifying.  After
nearly ten minutes cautious climbing, she came within arm’s length of
the child.

He was lying on his face, arms grasping a snag of rock at the back of
the grass bunch.  He had never looked so small to Pamela, and, in an
instant, she saw by his face what he had suffered; it was pinched and
drawn--stained with tears and dirt.

She laughed.  Not because she felt like laughter, but because she had
neither water nor food, and something must be done to rouse the failing
courage--_if_ they were to get up the fog-shielded height that towered
above them.

"I was mortal glad--when I heard you," volunteered Reube, gazing at her
with sunken eyes: "I was pretty near asleep."

"Not at all a nice place for a doze;" said Pam, "now what on earth made
you come here, young man?"

Reube said: "I dunno, Miss."  He did not, of course. He had just started
climbing down in a spirit of adventure, and found himself forced to go
on in order to find a way up again.  Here was the difficulty.  Pamela
saw that it would not be possible to go straight up from here.  A cold
thrill of dismay ran through her veins.  They _must_ move--they must
start moving at once, there was no time to be lost.  And she must find
out the way of least resistance, so to speak; that way only could she
get on with the exhausted child.  And she could not see!

The mist dazzled her, wetting every grass blade with a glitter of tiny
shining powder.  She would have to move upward, even though difficulties
forced her to go along the cliff face also.  That was all that seemed
perfectly clear. Also, and first of all, there was the condition of
Reube.

He remained passive, his white face resting on his arm, his hands
gripping the grass tussock.  There seemed no sort of spring in him, and
Pamela looked uneasily at his closed eyes.  She realized that he was
injured as well as exhausted, and said:

"What’s the matter, Reube--where are you hurt?" in very gentle tones.

Reube opened his eyes and tried to pull his scattered wits together.

"It’s me leg, Miss--and I’m that _dry_----" he ceased.

Pamela felt acutely that water was impossible.  Then an idea occurred to
her--very inadequate, but still something.  She spread her handkerchief
on the grass--saw that it began to get damp at once--and so left it for
a minute, weighted with a little lump of soil, while she looked at the
leg.

The obvious injury was a swollen and bruised knee, very blue, and
growing bluer.  But what she feared more was the appearance of the
ankle.  The child was wearing rather clumsy laced boots, too large for
him, probably his brother’s boots.  It was probable that the boot had
twisted, wrenching the ankle.  Pamela hoped that it was only a bad
sprain--not a break or a dislocation, but she did not know.  The foot
certainly looked queer.  She wondered if she ought to take the boot off.
But the laces were knotted in more than one place, and a terror of
interfering seized her.

"If only I knew first aid," she thought miserably.

The moment she got a chance she would learn the whole thing.  Therein
lay another immense advantage of being a real Guide.  She would have
known exactly what to do. But ignorant handling might make things very
much worse. She moved the foot cautiously, Reube shrank and winced.

She was sure it looked all wrong.  Suppose it was broken--what awful
pain!

Pamela returned to examination of her handkerchief.  It was quite
wet--really wet.  She pressed it between the child’s lips, feeling
hopeful.

"Suck it, Reube," she said, "it isn’t much, but it might make you feel a
wee bit better."

Then she remembered that soldiers sucked pebbles when they were very
hard put to it from thirst in front-line trenches.  She considered the
advisability of giving Reube a wet pebble to suck--if she could find
one--there seemed to be none in the least suitable.  After all, suppose
Reube swallowed the pebble in a moment of half consciousness! That would
be worse than anything.  She returned to a very settled conviction that
_the_ important thing in life was to know first aid, and belong to the
Girl Guides, when you would be armed with practical knowledge of what to
do in all circumstances.

Reuben seemed the least bit revived.  Whether it was the result of her
company or of the handkerchief one could not tell, but the time seemed
to have come to make a real start, if they were ever to get up the
mist-veiled height above them.

From then on--for possibly twenty minutes, when she was completely
played out--poor Pam remembered afterwards as a nightmare of the worst
kind.

She started by climbing up two feet, and then grasping Reube by the arm,
pulled him up to her.  She urged him to use his sound foot, and just
drag the other.  The slowness of the process was exasperating; the
difficulty grew and grew, because the climb was steeper and more
slippery. She persevered, Reube made heroic efforts--but at the end of
fifteen to twenty minutes, he lay a dead weight.

He had fainted.

Pamela felt pretty desperate.  They had come up some distance, but much
of the time had been spent in going a long round, that was bound to be,
because she was forced to pick the best foothold.  Not much useful
progress had been made, and what now?  She could not revive the child.
He might even be dead!

Pamela spoke aloud to herself.

"Well, dead or alive, I’ve got to get him up;" her teeth were set in
this determination.

After resting for a few minutes she took sure footing, tested her
position, and then, putting an arm around Reube’s waist, heaved up the
small body to a place perhaps a foot higher.  This process she repeated
six times.  She had gained perhaps eight feet, but she was very tired.
The child remained inert, with closed eyes.

Pamela rested again.  This time her lips trembled just a little, and she
blinked her eyes as she stared fixedly along that awful slope.  It was
so fearfully steep, and the foothold more and more slippery.  If only
someone would come!  She had not called, because she knew there was no
one about on the top of the cliff, and it seemed waste of breath and
strength.  She understood the curious stolidity of villagers.  Supposing
anyone passed along the road at the top he would take no notice of
cries--probably would not hear.

Had there been no fog, Addie might have seen her and climbed up.  Surely
the yawl must be somewhere below, cut off from vision by that mass of
elusive shifting whiteness.  Then she remembered that there was also a
calm, a dead breathless calm.  Perhaps the yacht had not passed
Heggadon, and might have to go back to Salterne when the tide turned.

Everything was against her, and against being found, because all the
attention would be for the yawl and not for herself; it would be taken
for granted she was safe on land.  She remembered that the Floweret
would certainly have said: "Where _can_ dear Pamela have gone to!
Surely she is very late."  That might have drawn people’s attention, but
even the Floweret was lost to her now.  There was positively no hope of
help.  Reuben’s life, and her own too, for that matter, depended on her
own unaided efforts.

She took a long breath, thought of all sorts of things in a queer rush
of resolution to do what hundreds--thousands--of brave men and women had
done in the fighting years.  After all this adventure was not unlike
getting a wounded comrade into safety from the lonely perils of No Man’s
Land.  If a wounded man could do it for another one worse
wounded--surely she, who was sound, could do it for this little
creature.

That was about the reasoning of her mind if it were analysed--but, of
course, it all passed like a flash of realization, she did not reason.
Then she began again, and had gone up in the same way another five feet,
hardly more, when a sick feeling of fright seemed to choke her--she
could not get higher.  She had come to a place that was so steep as to
be practically a wall.  It was like that for some ten feet, after which
it looked easier--but just here it was sheer.  She must try and get
round it, as it were--shift herself and the boy along.  To that end it
would be better to explore alone first--find out where her best road lay
and come back for Reube?  The question was dare she leave him, would he
move if he returned to consciousness, and roll down into the sea.

She was considering her position, when she heard a call--actually a
human call.

A wave of passionate thankfulness swept over her--nearly as possible she
burst out crying from sheer relief. Who--who could it be?

Then she saw.

Rather above, and a good deal to her left, was a figure making towards
them in a swift and capable manner.

Pamela was just going to answer with a cry of welcome, when a sense of
dazed confusion checked her, and for several moments she remained just
staring with an uneasy suspicion that she might have "gone off her head"
from the strain.

For the person coming down towards her was the double of herself.  No
less, apparently.

Pamela looked away--shut her eyes, opened them and stared down at the
sea, moving everlastingly through the shifting haze of the white fog.
Everything was the same. Reube was still unconscious.  She glanced at
the poor foot, it still seemed the wrong way round.  Then she looked
back at the girl, and saw--certainly herself--to all appearance.

A tall slim creature in a blue serge skirt, tan stockings, tan shoes, a
Japanese silk blouse, and chamois leather gauntlet gloves.  It was
almost a relief to realize that she wore a dark knitted
tam-o’-shanter--which Pam was not wearing that day, though she often
wore one.  Over the shoulder of this double hung a thick plait of lovely
bright hair.  Pamela glanced down at her own plait to compare them, and
her sudden thought was--

"Hers is lighter."

Pausing at a distance of some yards, the stranger stared hard at Pamela,
and Pamela was so absorbed in staring at her in return that she nearly
slid down the Beak into the sea.

"What is the matter?"

That was the first thing the double asked, and her voice was a little
unexpected.  It was rather deep, and she spoke slowly--carefully--with
the least touch of something different in the accent.

Pamela cleared her throat; she felt nervous, she felt the least bit as
though nothing were real.

"It’s little Reube Ensor," she said, "he’s hurt."

"Reube Ensor!" repeated the other girl with care, "how did he come upon
this cliff?"

"He’s only six.  He got away from the other children coming from school.
I suppose he wanted to climb. Anyway, he’s hurt his foot awfully.  I’ve
been trying to get him up for ages, but it’s appallingly difficult,
because he’s fainted and he can’t do a thing for himself, you see."

She rushed the words with a sort of friendliness, yet all the while she
was quite absorbed in the girl and hardly knew what it was she said.

"I shall help you," said the stranger; and came along in an active,
sure-footed way, glancing about as she came.

Pamela crossed over Reube’s small body to the right side, to make room
for the other girl who, kneeling, looked at him, at his leg and
foot--Pamela meanwhile looking at her.

"This is the boy of the farm on this hill," said the girl, and raised
her eyes, meeting Pamela’s.  They stared straight at each other, and the
original Pam--so to speak--was conscious rather thankfully that this
interloping "Pam" was not like her in the face.

She was handsomer.  She was very handsome, but she had not Pamela’s
elusive charm and daintiness of outline.

Her skin was fair and untanned; but her eyes were dark, long shaped, and
of a red-brown colour, with dark lashes; her eyebrows were long and
cleanly pencilled, set rather high above her eyes.  Her nose was the
least bit aquiline, and she had those cut-upward nostrils that give a
curiously disdainful air; it was a beautiful nose.  Her mouth was
beautiful too, very well shaped, but with rather thin lips, and her chin
was round and full.

She was certainly a very handsome girl, especially if you added her hair
to the catalogue.  It was golden--shades lighter than Pam’s--a real
bright gold colour, thick and long.

She sat down sideways--all her attitudes were graceful, like Pamela’s.

"Why did you come for him?" she asked, making a sign towards Reube.

"Why did you come after me?" retorted Pamela; she _felt_ instinctively
something the least bit supercilious in the look and manner of the
other.

"I was near the shed where carts are put, and I saw you. I have seen you
before, and I wished to know----" she paused, then went on, skipping
what she "wished to know", "I saw you put your basket on the cliff and
go down.  So I waited to know why you climbed in such bad weather.
After a while I came after you to see what happened.  If you had called
I should have come more quickly."

Pamela in return told why she had come back.  She related what Mrs.
Ensor had said.  "When I got to that cart-shed, it rushed over me all in
one instant that the crying sea-gull was Reube.  I _had_ to come back.
Don’t you have those sort of convictions sometimes--you know--when
there’s no earthly sense in a thing yet you’re perfectly sure it must
be."

The other girl shook her head.

"Oh no.  I don’t feel like that," she said, "I do what I choose, when I
wish to do it, that’s all."

Then she glanced up at the cliff just above them and went on with
decision.

"We cannot take him by that way.  It is less steep the path I came down.
We must go along--then up.  See, now, he is very small and light, we can
carry him between us, it will be easy for two."

                              *CHAPTER X*

                   *Life or Death on the Beak Cliff*

Afterwards, Pamela found she had rather an indistinct recollection of
that journey to the cliff top.  One thing was certain, she could not
have done it without the help of her double.  They carried Reube in a
sort of sling made by their own cotton petticoats.  It was the strange
girl’s notion, and proved quite practical.  Each girl wore a petticoat.
One supported the boy’s head and shoulders, and one his legs--any other
method would have been impossible, because of the injured foot, that is
to say, without causing terrible pain to Reuben.

He came to himself while he was being trussed into this amateur sling,
and stared at the new girl with such interest that Pamela felt it was as
good as "burnt feathers" for curing faintness.

"Hullo, Reube," she said, laughing, "now we shan’t be long--shall we?"

"No, Miss," agreed Reube in a weak voice.

"Hold on this," ordered the stranger.

"Yes, Miss, I’ll ’old to it," he gazed from one girl to the other with
interest.

That was the beginning.  The end was on the top resting near the egg
basket--with Reube like a mummy flat on the grass, and the pair of girls
taking breath.

"I’m awfully obliged to you," said Pamela, "really grateful beyond
words.  I should have had to stay there all night."

"All night, why?" asked the other, turning her head to look curiously at
the speaker.  In that moment Pam found herself wondering if the girl was
really as supercilious as she looked--or whether the expression was
caused by her disdainful eyebrows.

"Why!  But you wouldn’t leave a person like that, would you?"  Pamela
opened her big, grey-blue eyes as she answered with this question.

"Oh, yes.  If it seemed to be the most sensible thing to do.  I should
put him in the safest place possible--then I would go and find help."

"He would have fallen down," said Pamela decidedly, "he wasn’t
conscious, and he couldn’t hold on.  One daren’t be responsible for
leaving him."

The other girl shrugged her shoulders slightly.

"Oh, well--where is the sense to kill two people instead of one?  You
are the most important."

"_I!_  Not so sure," Pam laughed.  "I’m only a woman, and this child
will be a man some day.  We’ve got too many women in England as it
is--heaps too many, and we want all the boys we can get, they are
fearfully important."

"Oh, for that perhaps!  I was thinking of birth.  You are Pamela
Romilly, and your family is distinguished; he is but a common child."

Pamela was veritably startled by such an odd remark. The "common child"
appeared to have much the same feeling, to judge by his round eyes.  He
looked at Pam--to whom he was devoted--anything she said was right, but
he did not understand much about it anyway.

"That sounds rather like the Middle Ages--or the people of the French
Court before the big Revolution, doesn’t it?" she said cautiously, not
wishing to offend this young person of strange views who had helped her
so grandly out of a tight corner; "you see we don’t have that sort of
opinions nowadays.  At least one never hears them--especially since the
war.  It brought us all close together. Our brother fought--and Mrs.
Ensor’s brother fought, and there you are.  We’ve all got on the same
ground and we want to stay like that--you can’t put people back when
they’ve done ripping things, can you?"

Reube closed his eyes.  These were the sentiments he was used to from
Romillys, Shards, Ensors, and Badgers, and all the rest of the valley
folk; he could understand that.

"Did your brother fight?" asked the strange girl quickly.

"Oh, yes--Royal Navy--he’s Lieutenant on the destroyer _Spite_.  Dad’s a
sailor, you know, he commands the battleship _Medusa_, one of the new
ones."

There was a pause, then the other girl rose to her feet.

"My father was killed," she said in a sort of fierce, stifled voice.

Pamela jumped up also.  She was shocked through all her sensitive being.

"Oh," she exclaimed.  "Oh, I’m so horribly sorry.  I oughtn’t to have
talked about the war, one never knows. How splendid--how utterly
splendid!"

The other girl said nothing at all, but made a move to pick up Reuben.
Pamela took her share--and the egg basket, and the two of them started
off with the chrysalis slung between them.  It was easy enough going
through the longish coarse grass which was now so wet, and the drifting
mist that still held.  Pamela was thinking hard, but she did not speak,
that last sentence spoken by the strange girl had been such a shock that
she wanted her to do the talking.  Perhaps matters would be explained
later.

The hour was nearer seven than six o’clock, for all these doings had
taken up time.

One after another questions rose in Pamela’s mind. She was tired and
strained without knowing it, so the questions seemed to be dropped
without answers.  They went on down the long lane between the gorsy
banks.  As the strange girl was leading she had command of the
procession; she made for the cart-shed, went in, and stopped.

"Take your petticoat," she ordered, "then I will put this child on your
back, and open the gate.  You may take him to the farm."

"Oh--but----" began Pamela, disturbed and puzzled.

"I shall not come into the farm, if that is what you wish. It is not
possible," the other cut her short in a peremptory manner; "quick
now--we cannot stand here; someone may come and that would be annoying."

Pamela found herself swept along in spite of herself. She mechanically
did as she was told.  The other girl was so strong and decided.

Just before she lifted little Reuben she said to him:

"Please say nothing to your family about me.  Do you understand?  It is
better for everyone that people do not talk.  If you talk Sir Marmaduke
Shard will be angry with you."

"Yes, Miss," murmured Reube, awestricken and confused. A moment after he
knew nothing, because when he was lifted he fainted.

Pamela wanted to get the business over as quickly as possible.  The boy
was a great anxiety.  Also she felt as though her brain were entirely
confused, and she wanted to set it in order again.  She passed through
the farm-gate--the dog began to bark furiously--then she called.  On the
other side of the stack-yard she saw a man hurrying, it was Ensor, the
farmer; then Mrs. Ensor appeared, and immediately she found herself the
centre of a small crowd, and heard herself saying that they ought to
send for a doctor at once because the foot was very bad.

"It mayn’t be broken, but it’s all wrong," she said.

Ensor did not talk, he was a silent man; everybody else did, and Pamela
had to urge quiet and warm milk at once.

"I had nothing to give him and he was so thirsty, poor mite."

"You look bad enough yourself, Missie.  Down the Beak!  Whoever heard
tell the like.  Naughty boy----"

"Don’t scold him, Mrs. Ensor, he really has been through an awful lot,"
protested Pamela.  "No, I won’t stay a moment.  I must get back as soon
as possible, or my mother will be anxious.  If you like I’ll tell Major
Fraser at Mainsail Cottage, probably he’s in now."

But Mrs. Ensor would not have that--she had, as she told her husband, "a
better notion of what was becoming", so the eldest boy was
despatched--running--with a good deal of elbow action--and Pamela took
her leave then, and went soberly surrounded by an atmosphere of intense
loving gratitude.  It was hardly spoken--it was in the air.

She felt as though she had small right to it, because, had it not been
for the stranger, she must have been still on the face of that awful
cliff--with dusk coming on, and the fog so chill.  She shivered an
instant, but at the same time almost her heart gave a little bound of
excitement.

She had met the other girl; her own double!  And who was she?  What was
her story?  Where had she come from?

"I’ll ask her," thought Pam, "she will be waiting in the cart-shed."

But no one was in the cart-shed.  The place was bleak and shadowy, full
of mist.  The girl was gone.

It was a blow.  Freed from the burden and care of the rescued Reube,
Pamela had pictured that she and the girl would walk "home"--she did not
know where that was, but believed it to be Woodrising--they would talk.
She would learn the girl’s name, and hear where she came from and why
she was at Woodrising.

This break off was very irritating, because there was such a great deal
of mystery, and it has been said that Pamela was inquisitive, or at
anyrate always eager to know the "why" of puzzling things.  Then,
suddenly, a few words spoken rushed to her mind.  The girl had told
Reube that if he talked Sir Marmaduke Shard would be angry.  Well, that
settled it from one point of view.  Sir Marmaduke had brought someone
secretly to Bell Bay; this was the person he had brought--he was behind
the mystery!

"Woodrising is his house--they must have gone there, I thought that in
the beginning.  Now I wonder if that silly little Chipman creature is
taking care of this girl."

Pamela frowned as she reasoned it out.  There is a game in which people
hunt for hidden things and are told whether they are getting "warmer",
as they come near it, or "colder", as they get farther away.

Pamela was getting very warm indeed!

Just at that moment she saw someone in front of her. It was past the
turn into the cliff road, and she was making straight for the steep drop
into Bell Bay.  Clouds and the persistent fog together were making an
evening much too dull for the date, now days were lengthening out so
much. For a moment or two Pamela was uncertain, then she realized who
they were.  Two figures--one tall, with the unmistakable walk of a
flat-footed person who turns her toes in; the other small, very dapper
and neatly made, walking with short steps.

The Floweret, and Hughie.

She was startled almost into calling; then it occurred to her to shirk
persistent questions by keeping behind till they got home.  However,
that did not present itself as the right course to a member of the
Romilly family, so Pamela decided that first thoughts were best and she
shouted cheerfully.

Hughie stopped short, and checked his companion, who looked in every
direction but the right one before she became aware of Pamela’s slim
figure speeding down towards them.  Then she waved both her basket and
her waterproof cloak, and in so doing knocked Hughie’s hat off, while
some of the contents of the basket fell on the road.

Hughie salved them, miraculously unbroken, and replaced them in the
basket with precision.

"How delightful, dear Pamela!" cried Miss Chance beaming.  "Now where do
you spring from?  Do you know the most odd thing happened a short time
ago!  As Hughie and I were coming slowly up from the cove at
Ramsworthy--very slowly--I was quite convinced that I saw _you_ and
another girl exactly your height, you seemed to be carrying something.
Just for one moment I saw you in the mist, against the sky line, as it
were.  But fog is so terribly deceptive that I mistrusted my own eyes.
It was only for an instant--you seemed to be just on the top of the
cliff--then you disappeared."

"Well," said Pam, not at all afraid of the Floweret’s acuteness--because
it did not exist, "I was on the cliff top, and I was carrying something.
The fact is, Miss Chance, I’ve had a pretty lively adventure, and it’s a
bit of a mercy--it’s a real big mercy, when one comes to think of it,
that I’m here to tell my tale."

She walked on with them, carrying her eggs, and recounted her story,
very briskly--simply leaving out her double.

She told how she went over the cliff, because of the oddness of the
sea-bird scream, found little Reuben, and hauled him out of danger.  She
said very little, laying no stress on the terrible difficulty and danger
of the feat.

Hughie made no remark.  Miss Chance asked many questions.

"Dear Pamela," she cried, "I can’t bear to think of it!  How did you
manage to lift him if his foot was injured?"

Pamela said she used her petticoat as a sort of sling.

"_Petticoat_--Oh!" gasped the Floweret horror-stricken, and pursued the
matter no further in that direction.  "We cannot be thankful enough that
you are spared," she concluded.

"I gave him to the Ensors," went on Pamela, skating lightly over the
interval.  "Ensor was in the stack-yard--just going off to hunt--he’d
never have found Reube, I’m certain.  They sent off Joey to get Doctor
Fraser--look there they come--I’m so glad."

This created a diversion.  Miss Chance was thrilled also because she
adored Major Fraser--and all brave men, for that matter--she was an
excellent woman with high ideals, though her feet were flat.

The parties met and stopped for explanations.

"What’s this story about little Reube found by you on the Beak, Miss
Pam?" asked the Major, "Joey is a bit tongue-tied!  Here, young man, run
on and tell your mother I’m coming at once."

This order he gave in parenthesis, and then said to Pamela again:

"It seems to be a miraculous happening all round. Lucky for the child
that you heard him call--and still greater luck that you were able to
get him to the top!  But I suppose it was not the worst part of the
Beak?"

Pamela avoided the look of shrewd inquiry.

"It wasn’t precipitous, of course," she said, "we should be having tea
with the mermaids if it had been."

"Didn’t the fog make it slippery?" asked Major Fraser.

"Oh yes, rather.  However, we did it," then meeting his eyes she went
on: "I shall learn first aid after this, Major Fraser.  Do you know I
hadn’t a notion what to do with his foot.  He fainted, poor tiny mite,
and I hadn’t a drain of water except mist on my handkerchief!  It was
simply beastly.  I do hope you won’t find his foot broken, but really it
did seem to me quite the wrong way round."

"Well, I must get on and see to this wounded man--as for you, Miss Pam,
perhaps Miss Chance will kindly act deputy for me and see that you have
some strong soup and go to bed early."

He went on, thinking as he walked--not about Reuben Ensor.  He was
certain Pamela had kept back some important detail of her adventure.  He
knew the Beak.  He knew the physical powers of a girl like Pamela, and
the dead weight of a boy of six years old.

What was she keeping back, and why?

Meanwhile Pamela, having had quite enough of questions, and being
heartily sick of giving answers with a reserve behind, changed the
subject completely by demanding explanation from Miss Chance as to why
and wherefore she was--where she was?  Also what had become of the boat.

The Floweret fell into the trap all standing--never seeing that it was
intended to draw her mind from the Beak question.  She had a very pallid
countenance.  Pamela had noticed that when they met; and she proceeded
to explain it by the story of the day’s sail.

Salterne, she said, was delightful.  She had shopped to her heart’s
content; all the parcels were on the yawl. The sail down the river too
was perfectly charming.

"Do you know, dear Pamela," said poor Miss Chance, "I felt quite sure I
should prove a most competent sailor, and become quickly inured to the
ups and downs of sea-life. Indeed, I told dear Adrian that I hoped to
enrol myself as one of the crew of the _Messenger_ now that Sir
Marmaduke has lent her to the family.  Adrian did not say much, and I
must admit that when I got outside--I mean when the yacht was really at
sea--it became a different matter."

"Were you bad--sick, I mean?" asked Pamela.

"Oh, _very_."

"How wretched for you.  I am so sorry, Miss Chance, but you know one
does get like that--when it is jumpy, and when it’s very calm too.  You
mustn’t mind about it. Nelson used to be sick, didn’t he?"

"The great sailor Collingwood was martyr to _mal de mer_. Yes, dear, one
must comfort oneself with such examples. And really," added Miss Chance
with a touch of very earnest feeling, "I feel rather thankful that,
unlike them, my duty does not oblige me to pursue the experiment.  My
work lies on land, and I think I shall remain on terra firma in future."

"Shan’t you try sailing any more then?" asked Pamela in rather an
innocent voice.

"No, dear, I think not," answered Miss Chance with fervour.

"But where is _Messenger_?" went on Pam, "I can see they dropped you at
the Ramsworthy Cove, but what are they doing?  Coming home, or going
back?"

"They’ll come home if they can," informed Hughie, speaking for the first
time; "but Addie thought the tide mightn’t last out.  If it doesn’t, I’m
to tell Mum not to bother, because they’ll just run back to the harbour
and anchor inside the bar.  It would be ripping.  I wish I could have
stayed."

"Mother might have worried about your being on the yawl, anchored out,"
said Pamela.

"She needn’t," said Hughie rather sorrowfully--then he went on with more
vigour, "some day I shall anchor in all sorts of places.  In the Nile,
and in the Zambesi, and in the Lawrence, and in the Danube, and crowds
besides. It’s only just waiting till then.  I don’t much care."

In a spirit of philosophy he lapsed into silence, opening the gate on to
the Bell House lawn with an absent air.

There was so much to tell Mrs. Romilly that her attention was distracted
from the possible troubles of the yawl; besides, Miss Chance was so very
sincere in her assurances about the calm.

Pamela added that it was as safe inside the bar of Salterne river as at
the bridge.

"Much safer than Bell Bay."

"Addie says they’ll come on the very early tide and be here by seven
o’clock," Hughie repeated his message with care.  "He says there is
always a breeze in the very earliest morning."

"Did he tell you to tell me that, darling?" asked his mother, looking
into the earnest eyes that held hers.

"He told me, because Miss Chance was so awfully sick that she couldn’t
listen," answered Hughie.

Pamela said she would go to bed when Hughie did, and as Major Fraser’s
order was definite, she had the soup and went.  About that part of the
adventures related to her, the point most tragic, in Mrs. Romilly’s
opinion, was Reuben’s injured foot.  She was deeply distressed about
Mrs. Ensor, and made plans for sending up in the morning--inquiries and
dainties.

"How fortunate we are to have such a doctor as Major Fraser resting
here," she said to Miss Chance, "how thankful I am dear Pam heard the
child.  He might have died. I don’t know the Beak, Miss Chance, is it
very steep?"

The Floweret opined that it was certainly steep, she also mentioned the
detail of the petticoat sling.

"Pamela told me that was how she managed to get the boy up, it was a
most original idea you know, Mrs. Romilly, but Pam is so full of
resource, dear child--it is wonderful. When we met Major Fraser he was
in a hurry, but he asked questions.  I rather fancied he was surprised
she was able to do it, and you know I could not well mention the means
she employed, it would not have been quite nice, I thought."

"I’ll tell him," said Mrs. Romilly, "if he is puzzled. Of course, he
would be interested to know when you consider Pam’s age and limits.
It’s not like a man.  Reube is a tiny boy for his age, but they are all
fairly sturdy, and if it was very steep--Oh, my poor little Pam--I wish
I’d been there!  Yes, she is clever, and so plucky."

Meanwhile the person who was "clever and so plucky" had undressed in the
shortest time possible, got into bed and fallen asleep almost before she
laid her head down. For once in a way Pamela was worn out; not only had
the long strain and hard physical exertion tried her, but she was in a
mental fog about her mysterious double.

What to do about it!  What to do----

Ought she to tell her mother?  Did it matter?  If it did not matter, why
was Sir Marmaduke so secret, and why did the girl herself refuse to go
into Clawtol Farm, and lurk about in this queer way?  An ordinary
seaside visitor would come to the shore; why then did she never appear
in the cove or among the rocks?

All these questions chased each other through her mind while she
undressed and brushed out her long hair.  Then, just before she lay
down, came the realization of one fact. This strange girl appeared only
very early, or late--never when Bell Bay was busy with ordinary life.
Mollie saw her quite early.  Hughie saw her in the evening.  Crow and
Adrian saw her after dark, very late indeed.  Finally Pamela had seen
her in late afternoon, but then there was such a thick fog that she
could elude anyone.

"Oh, bother it all," thought Pam, "no good worrying any way, one can’t
do any more to-night."

Then she was asleep.

                              *CHAPTER XI*

                    *In which Adrian holds a decided
                           opinion about Pam*

No one should count on anything.  We say that often, yet we do the
opposite.  Pamela thought no one could bother her again that night, yet
she was wakened about two hours after she fell asleep by the cautious
opening of her door.

There was moonlight still, of course.  The moon rose later, and was
veiled by fog still, but grey light made things in her room visible.

"Pam!" it was Hughie’s voice; he slid round the edge of the door, closed
it after him, and came towards the bed on tiptoes, a quaint little
figure in blue-and-white striped pyjamas.

"Well?" answered Pamela, not in the least realizing that no cause but an
important matter would have made Hughie do this.  She was hardly awake.

Hughie seated himself on the edge of the bed and looked at her.

"Are you awake, Pam, now?" he inquired.

"Yes, I am--now----"

"Well, look here----"

"Look here what?  Why did you come?"  Pam was still confused.

"A person threw a thing into my window.  It went whack on the floor--not
a bump--just a teeny whack.  Then I got up and found it.  See----"
Hughie stretched out his hand.

Pamela gathered her wits together and sat up.  Then she bent forward to
look, and took the something from his hand.  She turned it over with
caution, surprised, and still befogged.

"What on earth!" she murmured, and stopped.

"I’ll light your candle," said Hughie.

Pamela glanced up.

"Get my torch, Midget, and snap it on while I look. We don’t want a
candle, it might be seen outside--or inside, for that matter; we don’t
need an audience."

Hughie did as he was asked, and stood by her side, bringing the little
bright light to bear on the parcel she held.  It was very small.  A
longish foreign envelope, containing apparently some little heavy things
of irregular size that felt like pebbles.  Pamela tore it open.
Certainly pebbles, little gravel ones not even washed, were in the
envelope, and a folded bit of paper.

Within the note were these words, written in a pointed narrow hand, not
like that usual with schoolgirls.

"I wish to speak with you.  Come to the Clawtol wood at 8.30 to-morrow."

There was no signature.

Pamela read it twice, then she said in a very wideawake tone:

"_Cheek!_"

Hughie watched her with interest.  He was not able to master handwriting
yet, but his wits were keen.

"Is it the other girl, Pam?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Who is she, then?"

"Goodness knows," exclaimed Pamela, "but she’s, well--she thinks a most
awful lot of herself.  Whether her opinion is justified I suppose her
friends know best.  _I_ know nothing at all, yet."

"Does she want you to do something, then?"

"My dear Midget, she doesn’t ask.  She coolly _orders_ me to meet her at
8.30 to-morrow--she writes ’to-morrow’ and never says whether it’s
morning or evening--to begin with, that’s idiotic!  And why does she
throw it into your window, I’d like to know?  She must be raving mad,
prowling about our house at--what time is it--eleven o’clock. It simply
isn’t decent."

Pamela was both annoyed and startled, at the same time she was
intrigued, and a tiny bit flattered.  This surprising stranger, who bore
a very distinguished stamp on her personality, had picked out
her--Pamela--as an acquaintance, not Christobel!  Well, it was odd; she
read the note again, and looked at the dusty little pebbles in the
envelope.

"She put those in to weight the letter, of course--but why your window?"

"She meant it for yours," suggested Hughie.

"Hum--how did she know these two rooms were yours and mine?"  Then a
light broke on Pamela’s mind.  "I know, Midget--she’s been pumping Mrs.
Trewby and Baker--I mean Mrs. Chipman, and they’ve told her things. Both
of them know how we live and what we do with ourselves.  She wasn’t sure
quite which window, so she chucked it into the first one, which happens
to be yours. I say though, it’s awful cheek!  Fancy if anybody saw her."

"Fancy if Addie and Crow were on the yawl and saw her in the garden--I
say," Hughie chuckled, "they’d say it was you, Pam--they’d be certain
this time."

Pamela lay back on her pillow and frowned.

"I wish she’d leave me alone, Midget.  I’ve a feeling in my bones that
she’ll get me into a mess before she’s done. I don’t believe she has a
shred of consideration, now she knows we are alike."

"Has she seen you, Pam?" asked Hughie with keen interest.

"Seen me!  Why, I perfectly forgot I’ve never told you a thing.  Here,
climb on the foot of the bed, and I’ll tell you exactly what happened
to-day.  I was so fearfully tired, and so busy warding off all the
idiotic questions, that I never remembered I hadn’t told you."

Hughie climbed up as suggested, packing himself like an Indian idol as
usual, and listened to the true and complete version of the rescue on
the Beak cliff.

When it was ended he said:

"Well, I thought it was fearfully funny that you got up Reube all alone.
I’ve been down there----"

"You have," interrupted Pamela with sharp disapproval, "then you’re not
to do it again, Midget.  Swear you won’t."

Silence.

"Well--look here," Pamela compromised, "if you won’t promise, will you
tell me when you go and let me come too. Honestly, it isn’t safe for
you.  Reube slipped and was nearly killed.  Only my going saved him."

"I’ll tell you, Pam," agreed Hughie, impressed by her anxious tones.

"That’s all right--on your honour, Midget, you’ve promised.  Well, to go
back to this woman, genuinely I shouldn’t have got up alone with that
child.  It was so slippery--one simply could not get a foothold to
grip."

"Major Fraser was thinking about it while he talked to us," remarked
Hughie dryly, "_he_ was wondering, I saw him."

"Well, he’ll have to wonder," answered Pamela shortly, "I’m getting fed
up with this girl.  By the way, Midget, her face isn’t like mine.  She’s
frightfully pretty."

"So are you," said her brother with firmness.

Pamela turned pink.

"Oh no--not pretty.  I may be interesting--I hope I am.  And I know my
hair’s decent.  But really and honestly this girl is lovely--and
yet--she didn’t exactly draw one. Some people make you love them on the
spot."

"Like Miss Lasarge," said Hughie.

"Yes, she’s simply adorable--and that reminds me of an idea that came on
me at supper.  I can’t go into it now--but remember to remind me, would
you, I might forget with all this rush of confusion.  Oh dear!  How
tiresome people are sometimes--what was I saying?"

"You said the girl was pretty, and she didn’t draw you," reminded Hughie
with painstaking care, "was she nice, Pam?"

"I couldn’t say.  She’s clever.  It was she thought of the petticoat.
She climbs like a cat; she isn’t a bit nervous--somehow she has a look
of being used to it.  There’s something about her that impresses
one--her nose is a bit hooky."  Pamela paused and considered the matter,
Hughie watched her intently; then she began again:

"She’s only told me one thing, Midget, and that came up by accident.
Somehow brothers and fathers happened to be mentioned, and she said
_her_ father was killed in the war.  Just that.  She looked so queer
when she said it, kind of fierce.  She’s got funny eyes--dark eyes, but
not black--or hazel, there’s a sort of tinge of red in them, and when
she told me that, the red shone."

There was another pause, then Hughie remarked:

"We _did_ see you, Pam."

"Who did?"

"Why don’t you remember Miss Chance said that we saw you in the mist
against the sky, and thought it was two Pams carrying something."

"I’d forgotten.  Yes, you must have."

"I didn’t say a word.  She just thought she was mistaken afterwards.
But I did rather wonder about it--especially when I felt pretty sure you
couldn’t have got up the Beak."

Pamela laughed.

"You have sense, Midget--heaps.  Now, look here, you’d better go to bed,
I’m sleepy."

Hughie slid off the bed.

"Shall you go to Clawtol Wood?" he asked.

"I don’t know.  I’m not sure.  Besides, how can I tell which 8.30 she
means?"

"She can’t mean breakfast-time," suggested her brother with reason.
"They’d tell her we have it at half past eight, and usually wait about
till nine in holidays.  Besides, it’s a bad time for hiding oneself
considering everybody in Bell Bay is going back to work."

"So it is.  Well, I must say going to meet people at 8.30 in the evening
is rather a vulgar sort of action," Pamela lay down as she gave this
distinctly sensible opinion.  "I don’t care about going.  I don’t think
I will, Midget."

"I wouldn’t," remarked Hughie decidedly, and went off--silently as he
entered.

The crew of the yawl was good as its word, and turned up at
breakfast-time--half past eight.  Indeed they were in the cove much
earlier, and riding on the moorings like a white swan on a pond.  It was
calm and fresh as fairyland. Mist seemed to have lasted most of the
night, but cleared with sunrise, leaving a wonderful feeling of
cleanness.

Christobel and Adrian were in high spirits, they had done what they most
wished; anchored out all night, and slept on board--on their own
responsibility, and they felt entirely satisfied with the experience,
also, anxious to do it again.  The more they did, the more they might be
allowed to do without bother or question, for when Mrs. Romilly
understood that they were as safe as in Penberthy’s day, she would cease
to trouble about them.

Addie shouted up to her window, and imparted news in cheerful tones.
Crow went in to have a bath and do her hair before the bell rang.

There was a general stir of excitement.

In the middle of breakfast Adrian said:

"Pam was up as early as we were.  I congratulate you, my dear
girl--never saw anything so athletic in my life! Talk about our risks!
They were jolly small compared to your plan of speeding about all over
the Beak at sunrise--jolly slippy hour too."

Pamela sat up with a sort of a start, and sat staring at the speaker
while a flush of colour crept over her face, saying nothing at first.

"No good you saying you were in bed--this time," continued Adrian with a
good-natured emphasis on the last two words, "we saw you, as plain as we
saw the old Beak--ripping it looked, too--didn’t we, Crow?"

"We saw a girl climbing down the Beak--who looked exactly like Pam----"

"Well, who else could it be _but_ Pam," interrupted Adrian, "need we
haggle over a thing like that?  If we were in London, or even Peterock,
one might see a few samples of girls, but not in Bell Bay."

Everyone was looking at Pamela, and for one wild moment she contemplated
saying she was the person seen, just to stop the conversation.  Then she
remembered that nothing is so silly--apart from wrong--as a fib, even a
harmless fib, because you are bound to tangle yourself up in a network
of bother, and afterwards, when you do tell the truth, people will not
believe.

"I wasn’t on the Beak this morning," she said; "I didn’t get up till
nearly eight."

There was silence of a tense kind.  Adrian raised his eyebrows and
looked at Christobel.  Christobel winced, gazed at her plate and turned
pink.  Mrs. Romilly glanced from one face to the other, puzzled.

Hughie came to the rescue.

"Pam got up soon before eight.  I know, because when she opened her door
I heard."

Poor Pamela cast a grateful look towards her faithful ally.

Then the Floweret--faintly conscious of uneasiness, but believing in
everybody’s good faith, as usual--burst into the conversation.

"I call that quite an odd coincidence--don’t you, dear Mrs. Romilly?  To
think that Pamela should have risked her life to save that of another,
on the Beak last evening, while we were all in ignorance.  And that this
morning when she was not there, Adrian should fancy she was! Most
strange, is it not?"

Nobody entered into argument as to the strangeness of the Floweret’s
"coincidence", but Crow demanded eagerly what was the story about Pam.

She was told--by everybody except Pamela, who sat listening.  Christobel
was intensely interested; Adrian asked many questions.  Finally, it was
decided that someone must go up to Clawtol and inquire about Reuben;
then the party dispersed, the decision having been reached that Crow and
Adrian would go up that morning, carrying certain delicacies for Reube;
and Mrs. Romilly would go herself to see Mrs. Ensor later in the
afternoon, probably after tea.

Nothing particular happened to the elder pair as they walked up, taking
the shorter and easier way through Crown Hill park, except that Adrian
gave it as his assured conviction--first, that Pamela had been on the
Beak that morning; secondly, that she had not rescued Reube Ensor.

"Addie, how _can_ you!" said Crow, almost tearful, "besides, it’s silly.
Hughie heard her get up; and how could she be telling a story about the
Beak?  Reube was brought up by someone--there he is, badly hurt.  I
think you carry things too far sometimes."

"My dear friend," pronounced Adrian weightily, "I assure you on my
honour that it would take every inch of muscle _I’ve_ got to haul that
child up the Beak."

"But, Addie, Pam is as active as a cat!"

"She may be, but she can’t do impossible things.  That cliff is fairly
precipitous, and the mist makes the whole show as greasy as butter.  I
tell you, Crow----"

"Perhaps she didn’t come up the worst bit," urged Christobel eagerly.

"The place we saw her on this morning is the worst bit--well, as bad as
any.  It’s all bad.  What did she tell that lie for, Crow, I ask you?
_I_ saw her.  You saw her. Rum thing is she must have seen us.  She was
there the whole time we took getting from opposite the lighthouse to the
north of the Beak.  Just crawling up and down, and moving along.  Why,
the thing was patent.  It was blazing. I swear I don’t understand what
Pamela is up to."

Christobel was on the point of suggesting a lame excuse; because she
certainly had seen Pamela, when they became aware of a lady wandering
over the grass in the wake of a King Charles spaniel whose nose was
buttoned up so high that it seemed miraculous he could live upside down,
as it were.  He was attached to a long lead, and as he ran round tree
trunks the lady became a fixture at unexpected moments, because she
never let go whatever happened.  She did not see the Romillys because
she was as short-sighted as the spaniel.

Christobel hurried towards her, with a cry of "Good morning, Auntie A.,"
unwound the dog and the lady, and started them again on a clear space.

"My dear children," said Auntie A., beaming, "how nice to see you both,
and looking so well too, but surely it is not summer holidays yet--what?
Ah, I should have remembered.  I saw you last week I believe, dear
Adrian, before Mollie went.  I miss her so much, especially in the
matter of Charles and his exercise--I do assure you he sets me at
defiance.  Indeed he does.  The spirit of the age, is it not?  So sad!
Excuse me, dear Christobel, but is my veil on my hat, I believe Dickens
put it there when I came out, I feel certain she must have done so, yet
I cannot find it."

"It is under your chin, Auntie A.," said Crow gently and unsmiling, "I
expect it got crooked and you pulled it down.  Shall I undo it, and
start again?"

"If you would, dear, I should be most grateful," said Miss Ashington,
beaming, and she stood still while Christobel undid the veil, took it
off, and put it on again neatly over the brim of her wide hat.  She
stood still, but she talked earnestly all the time about land girls and
farming, which was her special hobby at the moment.

Adrian teased the King Charles.  He hated it, and its way of making
snuffling noises and barks like coughs. Auntie A. never noticed that the
dog was being teased, but she heard the coughing barks, and said she
must go home and give poor Charles some tea made from stewed herbs. She
had invented the cure herself.  She and Charles drank it--at least it
was forced down the spaniel’s throat when he became extra snuffly.

"I really think he ought to have something, Miss Ashington," said Adrian
gravely, "he sounds as though he’d got congestion of the lungs, or
bronchitis, doesn’t he, Crow?"

Christobel said: "Oh no, I don’t think it’s as bad as that,"
reproachfully, but Miss Ashington turned homeward; she was pulling the
edge of her veil--already it was coming slowly down.

"Of course you want to know about poor little what’s-his-name," she
said, drifting on from the farm questions. "I sent to inquire, because
the milk boy told Mrs. Homer about the affair.  Dear Pamela seems to
have rescued the child in a most heroic manner.  So difficult to climb
up cliff’s with a boy on your back----"

"On her back," echoed Christobel in a surprised tone.

"Mrs. Ensor--or somebody--Oh yes, little Joe said she was carrying the
child on her back, and he was unconscious. Really, you know, my dear
children, I think steps should be taken to obtain the Humane Society’s
medal for dear Pamela."

"Isn’t that to do with drowning, though?" murmured Crow.

"Well, dear, the child _would_ have been drowned had he fallen from the
Beak.  It is practically the same thing.  I will write to my brother and
put the matter before him--something really must be done.  I feel that
we ought not to lose sight of your sister’s courageous act.  Sir
Marmaduke would, I am certain, be the first to insist----"

She was stopped suddenly by finding herself entangled in the lead.
Charles had gone twice round a tree stem.

"Really," murmured Auntie A., "really, this is _most_----" the rest of
the protest was lost in the folds of the veil which was coming off the
brim of her hat again.

Adrian picked up Charles and, walking backwards twice round the tree
trunk, set the confusion clear.

Miss Ashington did not laugh--she had not the faintest sense of humour,
but a very large heart.  She beamed with gratitude from a space between
the veil and the hat.

"Thank you, dear Adrian, how good of you.  We must go home.  I feel
convinced poor Charles is not himself."

Charles was not himself, if his normal condition was good temper.  He
was enraged with his persecutor and the worst of it was that he found it
impossible to explain, except in snuffles, which did not count.

"Rosemary tea," murmured Aunt A., jerking the string, "or was it sage?"

"I should give him laurel water, Miss Ashington," said Adrian in a
serious tone, "it has the most lasting effect on dogs of that breed."

"Laurel water!  Really, I must remember that.  Thank you, dear
Adrian--come, Charles, come----"

She went--with the veil round her shoulders, and Charles coughing
defiance at the enemy.  Charles had heard the parting advice and knew
perfectly well that "laurel water" was only a polite name for prussic
acid.

"How could you, Addie?" Christobel expostulated.

"Oh, it does them good--they both enjoy it," said her brother, "you
heard what she said about Pamela."

Christobel nodded.  She was pleased.  There was no doubt in the world
that Pam had behaved like a heroine, yet Addie was trying to make her
out something of a criminal! The matter was still more decided when the
two reached Clawtol.  They were overwhelmed with gratitude and honour by
little Mrs. Ensor in the first place, and Ensor himself in the second.

These two had removed their son from Pamela’s shoulders, and referred
several times to his disconnected recollections of that awful time on
the cliff front.

"They ’adn’t a drop of water, sir," said Mrs. Ensor to Adrian, her eyes
full of tears, "if I’d a known, my cup o’ tea would ’ave choked me.  And
boy says--Miss Pam takes ’er handkercher, and lays it on the grass--to
get misty like, then she puts it in ’is mouth.  ’Suck that, Reube,’ says
she ’an I wish I could do better for you.’  Wonderful I call it.
_Wonderful_.  And she nobbut a child ’erself when it comes to years.
He’s asleep now, missie, or you could see him."

Ensor came to the gate with his visitors.  There was quite a ceremonial
of respect in his manner.  Christobel gave the message that Mrs. Romilly
would call in the evening, and the two went off home by the cliff road.

Adrian said nothing much till they reached the much-discussed summit.
Then he went out over the ground, slowly descending, looking about as he
went.

"Don’t, Addie," protested Crow, following, "it’s simply beastly.  Just
look!"  She stood still.

After some minutes her brother came back.

"No time now," he said, "but I shall have a try later. In any case
though, I shall stick to my opinion.  I bet you everything I possess,
old girl, that Pamela couldn’t have done that job alone."

                             *CHAPTER XII*

                   *In which Pam defies the Countess*

Pamela was growing angry.  This seldom happened with her, because though
she had a temper "of her own", as Mrs. Jeep declared, it was well under
control.  She had a great contempt for people who are angry in a
"senseless" way, that is to say, without adequate reason.  In the
present situation she considered she had reason, and therefore
indignation was brewing up into serious anger.

"Why can’t people leave other people’s affairs alone," said Pamela to
herself.  What business had this handsome strange girl to mix up in
Romilly affairs?  She melted occasionally when she remembered the affair
of the cliff. It was well never to forget that the cool courage of this
inconvenient "double" had saved her from tortures indescribable, and
probably death.  One must never forget gratitude, and a debt of honour
like that; at the same time poor Pamela was grievously hurt at Adrian’s
suspicions and scepticism.

The worst of it was, they were true.

Addie knew, of course, she could not have done the work alone.  Yet she
dare not speak.  She had heard what the stranger said to Reube--Sir
Marmaduke Shard was at the back of this mystery, he was a great K.C. and
a person of untold wisdom; if she talked she might set on foot a whole
host of mischief; she might offend the Shards and endanger the present
joys of the yawl.  She might destroy the friendship between the Bell
House and Crown Hill.

Pamela’s imagination saw herself a perfect outcast, scorned by both
families, because she had not been able to hold her tongue for a brief
period.

The conditions were quite distinct to her eyes.  Sir Marmaduke, having
brought down the girl in secrecy--telling no one, not even Mrs. Romilly
or his own daughter--must intend it to remain a secret, for the present
anyway. And to prove it came the girl’s warning to Reube.

It was plain that she went out early or late.  She had been on the Beak
again that morning at seven o’clock.  Now was that by permission?
Pamela believed it was not.  She believed that her double gave the
keepers at Woodrising a most anxious time.

"She would," muttered Pam, with her head against the window frame, "she
would--she hasn’t got that nose for nothing.  She may trample on that
wretched Chipman, and give Mrs. Trewby jaundice, but she shan’t trample
on me.  I can’t help looking like her, but there it ends--no human power
shall turn me into a door-mat--to be ordered about by that nose."

These metaphors were confused certainly, but the intention was very
distinct.  Pamela had made up her mind about that message thrown into
Hughie’s window.  She was going to proceed on direct lines--and at once.
There, in the window-seat of her room, she had reasoned it out and come
to the conclusion that she must take decided action.

Nothing should make her meet the girl in secret.  She would go to
Woodrising after tea, ask to see her, and tell her so, once for all.

Hughie asked no questions that day, he was a tactful child.  Miss Chance
had a headache, and the two elders were going out in the dinghy to fish
for whiting, taking their tea.  Pamela felt a pang when Crow said:
"Won’t you ever come in the boat, Pam?"  It looked as though she had
private concealments, and the horrible part was that she had--only they
were honourable and with excellent intentions.

She excused herself with such anxious humility that Christobel’s
sympathy was with her entirely.  Adrian said nothing.

Mrs. Romilly started for Clawtol escorted by Hughie. Then Pamela Romilly
made preparations to put her foot down with credit to her family.

She brushed her long hair, changed her blouse, and put on a different
hat, a shady one.  She got out clean washed gauntlet gloves, and
polished her brown shoes.  Then she went up to Woodrising.

She met no one by the way, and all the time was conscious of surprise at
her own boldness--for no one can deny it was bold.

Arrived outside the carriage-gate in the wall she found it was locked.
There was a pair of big gates with little spikes along the top, and in
one of these was a small gate.

"Anyone would think it was a lunatic asylum," thought the girl, and from
that sprang a sudden amazing question: "Was it?  Was this strange girl a
’funny person’?  She did not look ’cracked’," as Pam breathlessly put
it, but one never knows!

The only thing to do was to summon Mrs. Trewby by the gate bell.  So she
rang it.  As she stood waiting, she recalled that Mrs. Trewby had told
Mrs. Jeep she always kept the gate locked, because of tramps and
trippers.

"Anybody wouldn’t believe how folk make free with a person’s property,"
Mrs. Trewby had said.  "Here, there, and everywhere--and to sweep up
after them is not what I’m paid to do."  So the gate was kept locked
because of excursionists, not lunatics.

Mrs. Trewby came with slow steps, and Pamela heard her sigh as she undid
the chain.  The small gate opened, and the two looked at each other
through the opening.

"Good afternoon," said Pamela politely, "could I see the young lady who
is staying here?"

Mrs. Trewby looked as though someone had fired a squib in her ear.  Her
sallow face and melancholy eyes became distracted and rather frightened.

"Young lady," she echoed, and moved the gate a few inches as though to
close it.

"Yes.  We needn’t pretend, need we, Mrs. Trewby. I’ve seen her, and she
sent me a note last evening asking me to meet her.  I must speak to
her."

"Sent you a note, miss!"  Mrs. Trewby repeated these words in a startled
manner.  "Who ever brought it?  If it was boy----"

In this way Mrs. Trewby let the cat quite out of the bag, and made it
impossible to deny the presence of the young lady at Woodrising.

"She brought it herself," said Pamela, "if you want to know how she gave
it in, you’d better ask her, I’m not here to tell things; I’m here to
speak to her, it’s important."

Mrs. Trewby stood in awe of the Romillys, and at that moment she was
almost afraid of Pamela.

"Well, miss," she conceded, "if you’ll step inside, I’ll tell Mrs.
Chipman.  She will be in a way, but I can ask her.  It’s no business of
mine--what I say is ’attend to your own business, it’ll take all your
time’--nobody can say I’ve put myself forward to interfere; it’s not my
nature; I never was one for forwardness, that I will say."

These comments on her own character were made by Mrs. Trewby as she shut
the gate, locked it, and led the way across the gravel sweep to the
square white porch in the square white house-front.  Here again was a
double-locked door she opened, and Mrs. Trewby led Pamela into the dim
hall; then, with a murmured assertion that it was not her fault, she
melted into some back passage.

In the briefest time, and before Pamela had time to do more than take in
the fact that the hall ran through the house to a glass door at the end,
and that there seemed to be several rooms, Mrs. Chipman burst upon her
sight.

She was a little woman, stout, and extremely bustling and buxom.  She
wore the style of garment that used to be called a habit bodice--tight
and firm, and bristling with bead trimming and buttons.  Her neck was
short, but she had a beaded collar fastened by a brooch.  Nothing on
earth could have been more respectable and farther from any idea of
mystery than Mrs. Chipman.

"Good evening, Miss Pamela," she said in a quick bustling voice,
suppressed to a low note, "I find Mrs. Trewby’s communication difficult
of comprehension.  Do I understand that you have a message for--me?"

"I wish to see the young lady who is staying here, Mrs. Chipman, and to
make things clear I may as well say that I’ve spoken to her.  And she
sent me a note--I’ve really come about the note."

"Excuse me, Miss Pamela, might I request----"  Mrs. Chipman motioned
towards a door with a flourish of her fat hand, and then led the way to
it, flung it open and let Pamela pass in, then she shut the door and
practically stood with her back to it, thus barring the way out.

Pamela glanced round expecting to find the person she wanted, but there
was no one in the room but themselves. It was apparently a dining-room,
comfortably furnished in a very solid manner, and having a window at the
end looking over the lawns.

Mrs. Chipman swept on without taking breath.

"I realized some such demand from words conveyed by Mrs. Trewby, but the
mental capacity of persons dwelling in the country--as a
permanency--being to a great extent limited, I believed she had mistaken
your words.  I am loath indeed to deny any member of the family what
would appear a most reasonable request, but I assure you, Miss Pamela, I
stand in a position of trust--nay, more--a position of great
responsibility, and therefore I grieve to say that I could not
accede--that is to say if there is a young lady at all.  To begin with I
cannot admit that there is a young lady----"

"Then you must be sillier than people think, Mrs. Chipman," said Pamela
blandly, "we’ve all seen her--only the others take her for me----"

"That is so--the case with many----"

"Well, I don’t like it then," Pamela cut her short with raised tone.  "I
don’t like it, and I won’t bear the burden of the things she does.  So
far _I_ am the only person who has spoken to her--in our family--but
unless you let me see her now, and speak to her, and settle things up, I
will tell them all--every one."

Mrs. Chipman tried to speak.  Pamela continued firmly,

"I don’t want to be the least rude, but if you are responsible and all
the rest of it, why don’t you look after her? Do you know she threw a
note into my brother’s window last night about eleven, or half-past
ten?"

Mrs. Chipman gave a squeak like a trapped mouse, then she pressed a hand
to her tight bodice.

"Surely, surely, miss--I cannot credit----"

"It was Hughie’s window, the next to mine," went on Pamela, "_he_
brought it in to me, because it was addressed to me.  How she knew our
rooms I can’t say--but that doesn’t matter--the point is, what was she
doing in our grounds at that time?"

Then flashed into Pamela’s mind the power of the whip she held--she went
on:

"What would Sir Marmaduke say, Mrs. Chipman?  If you won’t let me see
her, I shall certainly ask _him_ if I may--and explain matters."

Mrs. Chipman was "taken all aback", like a full-rigged ship up in the
wind.  She hesitated.

"Far be it from me, Miss Pamela, to place obstacles----"

"That’s all right then," said Pam, "can I see her now?"

At that moment a bell pealed somewhere in the house. Really pealed, with
the jangling force of a violently pulled bell.

"If you will excuse me, miss," said Mrs. Chipman, visibly perturbed.
She opened the door, and hurried out into the hall, Pamela following
closely with interest very wide awake.

Again the bell was rung, more forcefully than ever.

"Dear, oh dear!" muttered Mrs. Chipman, increasing her pace.

Pamela giggled.

But the bell-puller was unreasonably impatient.  A door on the right
hand of the hall--same side as the room they had quitted, but the last
door--opened sharply, and the girl under discussion appeared.  She wore
no hat, and held a book in her hand.

"I rang twice," she said, "I heard voices, and----"

Pamela came forward.  Drawn up to her full height, her carriage and
manner were at least as haughty as those of the other girl.

"_I_ was talking to Mrs. Chipman," she said.  "As a matter of fact I
came to see you, and she was doubtful about it; so I told her I
insisted."

"Excuse me, Countess," burst in Mrs. Chipman, "but I must protest now,
and once for all against irregular conduct.  I stand in the position of
guardian.  The grounds are open to you, and you have the option of
gravitation to any portion of the wood, orchards, or gardens--there is
no excuse----"

"You talk too much," said the girl irritably, "be silent. You are not a
guardian, you are my maid--Sir Marmaduke is my guardian, for the time.
Come into this room, Miss Romilly, I will receive you here."

She turned round and went back into the drawing-room, leaving Mrs.
Chipman blown out like an angry bird with feathers on end.

Pamela followed--thinking hard, "receive me!  Cheek!" and the other
revelation--"So Countess wasn’t a dog!  I wonder what sort of Countess!"

In the drawing-room with the door closed, the two girls faced each other
standing.  And Pamela was again struck by the beauty and imperious style
of this odd "double". Also, she had to admit how wonderfully alike they
were in general effect.

Pamela began the conversation.

"I’ve come about your--note," she said with a little gesture of her hand
towards her skirt pocket, "I suppose you don’t realize that you mistook
the room and threw it into my brother’s window?"

"Oh, the little boy’s room.  He gave it to you?"

"Yes."

"Did he read it?"

"I don’t understand you," said Pam frowning.

"Did he open it when he picked it up in his room?"

"Naturally not," Pamela stiffened, "you don’t seem to understand.  No
decent people open other people’s letters."

Countess shrugged her shoulders.

"Just so.  That is well then.  But if you received my note why did you
not come to the wood?"

"Come!  When?"

"The hour that I appointed.  8.30."

Pamela raised her eyebrows.

"So you expected me to go to Clawtol at half-past eight this morning,
because you wished it!  Doesn’t it occur to you that you
are--well--rather presumptuous? Why--on--earth--should I?"

Pamela fired off each word, as it were, with a separate emphasis.

The girl seemed a little taken aback by this way of looking at things.

"Wretched creature," thought Pamela suddenly, with the broad instinct of
fair play natural to girls of her upbringing, "she’s always had her own
way.  She thinks herself a little tin god!  She doesn’t understand!"

"Can I sit down?" she said aloud, and without waiting for an answer took
her seat on a big sofa, near the window.

The other girl moved a step or two nearer, and sat down at the other end
of the same sofa.

"Well, look here," went on Pamela, "let’s understand each other, if you
don’t mind, then there won’t be any bother."

"Is there some bother?" asked the other girl.

Pamela controlled her temper with effort.  The assumption of superiority
was so aggravating.

"There will be a good deal of bother, if you do unreasonable things,"
she went on, trying to be indifferent. "If you want to send notes would
you kindly leave them at the front door, because----"

"Impossible," interrupted the Countess decidedly, "you see I am not
supposed to go outside these grounds. If I were to walk to your house
openly I should betray myself.  I do not stay in the grounds of course,
because I wish to go outside.  But I employ my own means."

Pamela looked at her with a frustrated feeling.  If only the girl were
not so horribly "cock-sure"!

"Well, look here," she began at another point, "will you tell me your
name?  I find it a bit difficult to talk without knowing it."

A sort of glint flashed in the stranger’s eyes.  And Pamela’s natural
perceptions caused her to read the thought behind that glint on the
instant.

The girl imagined she was fishing for information!

"You can call me ’Countess’, if you wish to give me a name," she
answered, "I have eight names, but I do not tell them to people in this
place.  You heard my maid say ’Countess’.  Very well, then, you can also
say Countess."

"Oh, thanks--that’s very obliging of you," said Pamela, quite
unimpressed, "it’s as you please, of course.  And after that, to get to
the reason of my visit.  I naturally supposed that you meant me to meet
you at 8.30 to-night."

"Oh--to-night will do," allowed the Countess quite amiably, "I wished
this morning, because I was in a hurry, but to-night will do as you have
misunderstood my meaning."

"_Neither_ would do, simply because I’ve no intention of meeting you
anywhere, or at any time.  It is just as well you should understand."

There was a pause.  Then Pamela took up her parable again--rather
enjoying herself.

"As I said to you a few minutes ago, why on earth should I?  _I_ don’t
want to be bothered with meeting anybody on the sly--we don’t do it in
our family.  The others would soon notice and think I was doing a
low-down thing.  I don’t know you--I don’t know your name.  You are no
business of mine.  I don’t care what you’ve got to say if it is
secret--if it isn’t, well, be open.  That’s the whole position, please
understand I came here because I wish to be open, and to tell you
honestly."

The Countess sat still with her eyes gazing at the carpet, her glance
had dropped from Pamela’s expressive face and large clear eyes.

"You are unkind," she said, after a moment of silence. "I have no
one--no one."

She clasped her hands together rigidly on her lap, and Pam saw that they
shook.  The corners of her proud mouth twitched a little.  But she held
herself severely in check, and controlled evident emotion.

_This_ was worse than anything to a girl with a heart like Pamela’s.

"I’m sorry," she said, "awfully sorry--but, what did you want me for?"

She was annoyed with herself for asking, it was a weakness, she felt
that.

Countess raised her eyes to meet Pam’s.  There was a something the least
bit softer over their hard brightness.

"I am troubled," she said, "and wished to ask advice from you.  When we
carried that boy up the cliff yesterday I dropped my brooch--it was a
safety pin of rather large size, of gold, and with my first letter and
the crown in diamonds.  My mother gave it to me on my birthday when I
was twelve years old--I would not lose it for the world.--It was in my
blouse--here, you see," she touched the opening of her silk shirt.  "I
don’t know what I should do, I cannot find it--but I cannot offer a
reward--what shall I do?"

"You were on the cliff this morning looking for it, weren’t you?" asked
Pamela, full of sympathy, and realizing the reason for Adrian’s attack
on herself.

Countess nodded.

"Oh, for a long while, everywhere."

"My brother saw you.  They were coming back from Salterne in the yawl,
and passed under the Beak about seven o’clock.  They thought it was _I_,
you see," Pamela made a little grimace of disgust, "and said what was I
doing there? I said I wasn’t there."

"Did they believe you?" asked Countess, with a sudden interest that made
her seem more girlish.

"Crow did."

"’Crow’!"

"I beg your pardon, I mean Christobel, my elder sister. She is Mollie
Shard’s friend, and she’s going to be presented fairly soon--she’s done
with school--but we are awfully good chums.  _She_ believed me, of
course.  She’d sooner mistrust her own eyes than my word, because we
both know we wouldn’t tell each other crammers."

"Is that lies?"

"Yes.  She knows I wouldn’t.  _You_ wouldn’t tell your sister lies when
you knew she trusted you, would you?"

Countess shrugged her shoulders with a faint air of amusement.

"I have no sister, so--well!  But I should tell any person what I like,
and whatever suited me to say.  No one is bound to incriminate
themselves.  It is not ’lies’, as you call it--that is business, and
common-sense."

"Can’t agree with you at all," said Pamela icily.  "’Business and
common-sense to tell lies when it paid’.  Nice sort of ideas!"

She sat silent for a moment, then she asked:

"Are you at school?"

"Since I was ten years old, I have stayed--with a family--in England."

"Oh, then you are not _English_?"  Pamela felt a sense of relief, though
she always tried hard not to be narrow.

"No," said the Countess, adding, after a moment’s pause, "I was to go to
school next term after the summer holidays."

"Shall you now?"

"I don’t know.  I dare say not.  I went for a while, it was horrible.  I
left soon; I don’t know about anything."

"No wonder she left soon," thought Pamela, "her talk is simply full of
’I’s’, never heard anyone say so many."  Again there was silence,
because it was not easy to keep up conversation; the situation was so
cramped and artificial to a girl of "open-air" temperament.  Pamela
began wondering if it would not be better to go now; she had said her
say, and wanted to end it all.

"Well, I’m awfully sorry about your brooch," she pulled up her gloves,
and made a move to stand up.  "If I hear that anyone has found it, what
shall I do?  I can’t claim it. Shall I give it to the Police--or what
about Miss Ashington?"

"Who is Miss Ashington?  Don’t go yet--I want to talk to you--I want to
know things."

Pamela settled down rather uneasily, for the Countess had laid a
restraining hand on her arm.

"Oh, Miss Ashington is Lady Shard’s sister," she answered the first
question simply.

"Yes, of course, but I forgot.  Chipman told me that, I remember now.
No, how could I tell her, it would betray me, since the brooch is lost
on the cliff, or the road. I cannot tell what I shall do--besides this
Miss Ashington knows nothing of me--no one knows."

Again she conveyed an impression to Pamela that she was not telling the
truth.  Whether it was a true impression or not, it stiffened Pamela’s
resolution.

"I’m afraid I can’t think of anything, then," she said, "if you don’t
know anyone _really_, and you won’t let Mrs. Chipman offer a reward.  If
I find it, I’ll leave it at the door with Mrs. Trewby.  And now I must
go, really and honestly."

"But you will come and see me," protested the Countess.

"How can I?  You say yourself that Sir Marmaduke has put you here, and
wishes no one to know.  There must be some good reason for him to
arrange that--he’s an awfully kind, nice man, we all love him," said
Pamela warmly.  "I won’t do sly things against his wish.  Why, he’s
letting us use his lovely yacht now."

"That white yacht is his?" asked the other girl.

Pamela assented.

"And you go out on it when he is away?"

"He is allowing us to use her all the summer till he comes in
September--it’s awfully kind."

"Then who goes with you?" demanded the Countess; she seemed interested.

"No one, we manage her ourselves.  There used to be a man, but they want
him in the gardens at Crown Hill, so we go quite alone."

"Go where?"

"Oh, anywhere along the coast here.  This morning Adrian and Christobel
were coming from Salterne.  They got caught in that thunderstorm the
other day, and ran in there up to the harbour, left the yacht, and came
back by train.  Yesterday they went by train to fetch her, and came back
early this morning."

Pamela was feeling a little more friendly as she talked about the
_Messenger_.  Memories rushed into her mind of the evening of the
thunderstorm day and how the others had mistaken the Countess for her.

"That reminds me," she said, "on the evening of the thunderstorm day did
you go out--to Folly Ho, on the Peterock Road, and come home late, quite
late--half-past nine.  Oh, nearly ten?"

The other girl considered.  Not as though she did not remember, but as
though she was not sure whether she would tell or no.

Pamela got up from her seat and walked a few steps; they walked together
to the middle of the room, and paused there to say good-bye.

"Yes, no doubt I went out.  I often do," said the Countess rather
cautiously.

"Well, Addie and Crow--the others I mean--saw you. They were coming from
the station.  Didn’t he whistle?"

"If you say so, I expect he did.  I think I heard a whistle one night."

"He said you looked round and then ran.  They thought it was I, and they
were cross with me."

At this moment Pamela noticed that the other girl’s attention was fixed
upon a long mirror on the wall opposite She also looked, and saw the two
full-length figures, each with its long tail of beautiful bright hair.
The same height! The same figure!  The same dress!

"Oh!" ejaculated Pam in startled dismay.

The Countess laughed, for the first time.

Afterwards, as Pamela hurried home with rather a perturbed mind,
thinking puzzled thoughts, the picture of that pair of girls was
distinct, and tiresome.  She did not like it.

                             *CHAPTER XIII*

                    *Double "A" and a Diamond Crown*

In a day or two Pamela had recovered from those pricking fears.  After
all, there was nothing to worry about. The Countess would not worry her
any more, because she had been firm.  "The great thing is," thought Pam,
"to be firm.  To let people really see that you mean what you say, then
they won’t ’try it on’."  She felt that the Countess had been inclined
to "try it on".  There was no doubt about that.  Now it was ended, and
no one a penny the worse.  Who she was, or what she did at Woodrising
must remain a mystery, for the present anyway.  It was tantalizing, but,
as the girl had offered no explanation herself, Pamela felt it would be
impossible to pry or ask servants, even if they would answer.  She was
sorry about the brooch, sorry for the loneliness of this strange young
person; all the same, she felt instinctively that the Countess could
very well take care of herself.

The sun shone, the wind blew, not too hard.  Pamela, with something of
thankfulness, threw herself into the boating plans, and went out fishing
for whiting, which the family ate joyfully.

Three or four days of peace went by, and then a positive bomb of
annoyance fell into her pleasure, scattering destruction on all sides.

Adrian put off things often.  He forgot, or seemed to for the moment,
but never for good.  There was a strong underlying tenacity in his
nature; he always did--ultimately--what he said he would do.  Therefore,
after apparently forgetting what he had said about inspecting the Beak
cliff, he went off one day before breakfast--after an early bathe--and
went down over the ground that had been so much discussed.

The result was startling.

When Pamela came down to breakfast that morning she found everybody
absorbed in the examination of some small thing Mrs. Romilly was