ciphers. This one looked like the numerical kind where
sets of figures correspond to the letters of the alphabet,
but any fairly shrewd man can find the clue to that sort
after an hour or two's work, and I didn't think Scudder
would have been content with anything so easy. So I
fastened on the printed words, for you can make a
pretty good numerical cipher if you have a key word
which gives you the sequence of the letters.

I tried for hours, but none of the words answered. Then
I fell asleep and woke at Dumfries just in time to
bundle out and get into the slow Galloway train. There
was a man on the platform whose looks I didn't like,
but he never glanced at me, and when I caught sight of
myself in the mirror of an automatic machine I didn't
wonder. With my brown face, my old tweeds, and my
slouch, I was the very model of one of the hill farmers
who were crowding into the third-class carriages.

I travelled with half a dozen in an atmosphere of shag
and clay pipes. They had come from the weekly
market, and their mouths were full of prices. I heard
accounts of how the lambing had gone up the Cairn
and the Deuch and a dozen other mysterious waters.
Above half the men had lunched heavily and were
highly flavoured with whisky, so they took no notice of
me. We rumbled slowly into a land of little wooded
glens and then to a great wide moorland place,
gleaming with lochs, with high blue hills showing
northwards.

About five o'clock the carriage emptied, and I was left
alone as I had hoped. I got out at the next station, a
little place whose name I scarcely noted, set right in the
heart of a bog. It reminded me of one of those
forgotten little stations in the Karroo. An old station-
master was digging in his garden, and with his spade
over his shoulder sauntered to the train, took charge of
a parcel, and went back to his potatoes. A child of ten
received my ticket, and I emerged on a white road that
straggled over the brown moor.

It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill
showing as clear as a cut amethyst. The air had the
queer, rooty smell of bogs, but it was as fresh as mid-
ocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirits. I
actually felt light-hearted. I might have been a boy out
for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirty-
seven very much wanted by the police. I felt just as I
used to feel when I was starting for a big trek on a
frosty morning on the high veld. If you believe me, I
swung along that road whistling. There was no plan of
campaign in my head, only just to go on and on in this
blessed, honest smelling hill country, for every mile put
me in better humour with myself. In a roadside
planting I cut a walking-stick of hazel, and presently
struck off the highway up a by-path which followed the
glen of a brawling stream. I reckoned that I was still far
ahead of any pursuit, and for that right might please
myself. It was some hours since I had tasted food, and
I was getting very hungry when I came to a herd's
cottage set in a nook beside a waterfall. A brown-faced
woman was standing by the door, and greeted me with
the kindly shyness of moorland places. When I asked
for a night's lodging she said I was welcome to the
"bed in the loft," and very soon she set before me a
hearty meal of ham and eggs, scones, and thick sweet
milk.

At the darkening her man came in from the hills, a lean
giant, who in one step covered as much ground as
three paces of ordinary mortals. They asked no
questions, for they had the perfect breeding of all
dwellers in the wilds, but I could see they set me down
as a kind of dealer, and I took some trouble to confirm
their view. I spoke a lot about cattle, of which my host
knew little, and I picked up from him a good deal
about the local Galloway markets, which I tucked away
in my memory for future use. At ten I was nodding in
my chair, and the "bed in the loft" received a weary
man who never opened his eyes till five o'clock set the
little homestead agoing once more.

They refused any payment, and by six I had
breakfasted and was striding southwards again. My
notion was to return to the railway line a station or two
farther on than the place where I had alighted
yesterday and to double back. I reckoned that that was
the safest way, for the police would naturally assume
that I was always making farther from London in the
direction of some western port. I thought I had a good
bit of a start, for, as I reasoned, it would take some
hours to fix the blame on me, and several more to
identify the fellow who got on board the train at St.
Pancras.

It was the same jolly, clear spring weather, and I simply
could not contrive to feel careworn. Indeed I was in
better spirits than I had been for months. Over a long
ridge of moorland I took my road, skirting the side of a