The Bittermeads Mystery | Page 5

of the frightened mice, that some one was
lurking near at hand.
But the two in the lighted doorway opening on the veranda heard and
suspected nothing.
One was a man, one a woman, both were young, both were
extraordinarily good-looking, and as they stood in the blaze of the gas
they made a strikingly handsome and attractive picture on which,
however, Dunn seemed to look from his hiding-place with hostility and
watchful suspicion.
"How dark it is, there's not a star showing," the girl was saying. "Shall
you be able to find your way, even with the lantern? You'll keep to the

road, won't you?"
Her voice was low and pleasant and so clear Dunn heard every word
distinctly. She seemed quite young, not more than twenty or
twenty-one, and she was slim and graceful in build and tall for a
woman. Her face, on which the light shone directly, was oval in shape
with a broad, low forehead on which clustered the small, unruly curls
of her dark brown hair, and she had clear and very bright brown eyes.
The mouth and chin were perhaps a little large to be in absolute
harmony with the rest of her features, and she was of a dark
complexion, with a soft and delicate bloom that would by itself have
given her a right to claim her possession of a full share of good looks.
She was dressed quite simply in a white frock with a touch of colour at
the waist and she had a very flimsy lace shawl thrown over her
shoulders, presumably intended as a protection against the night air.
Her companion was a very tall and big man, well over six feet in height,
with handsome, strongly-marked features that often bore an expression
a little too haughty, but that showed now a very tender and gentle look,
so that it was not difficult to guess the state of his feelings towards the
girl at his side. His shoulders were broad, his chest deep, and his whole
build powerful in the extreme, and Dunn, looking him up and down
with the quick glance of one accustomed to judge men, thought that he
had seldom seen one more capable of holding his own.
Answering his companion 's remark, he said lightly:
"Oh, no, I shall cut across the wood, it's ever so much shorter, you
know."
"But it's so dark and lonely," the girl protested. "And then, after last
week - "
He interrupted her with a laugh, and he lifted his head with a certain not
unpleasing swagger.
"I don't think they'll trouble me for all their threats," he said. "For that
matter, I rather hope they will try something of the sort on. They need a

lesson."
"Oh, I do hope you'll be careful," the girl exclaimed.
He laughed again and made another lightly-confident, almost-boastful
remark, to the effect that he did not think any one was likely to interfere
with him.
For a minute or two longer they lingered, chatting together as they
stood in the gas-light on the veranda and from his hiding-place Dunn
watched them intently. It seemed that it was the girl in whom he was
chiefly interested, for his eyes hardly moved from her and in them there
showed a very grim and hard expression.
"Pretty enough," he mused. "More than pretty. No wonder poor Charles
raved about her, if it's the same girl - if it is, she ought to know what's
become of him. But then, where does this big chap come in?"
The "big chap" seemed really going now, though reluctantly, and it was
not difficult to see that he would have been very willing to stay longer
had she given him the least encouragement.
But that he did not get, and indeed it seemed as if she were a little
bored and a little anxious for him to say good night and go.
At last he did so, and she retired within the house, while he came
swinging down the garden path, passing close to where Dunn lay
hidden, but without any suspicion of his presence, and out into the high
road.

CHAPTER II
THE FIGHT IN THE WOOD
>From his hiding-place in the bushes Dunn slipped out, as the big man
vanished into the darkness down the road, and for the fraction of a

second he seemed to hesitate.
The lights in the house were coming and going after a fashion that
suggested that the inmates were preparing for bed, and almost at once
Dunn turned his back to the building and hurried very quickly and
softly down the road in the direction the big man had just taken.
"After all," he thought, "the house can't run away, that will be still there
when I come back, and I