The Second Wayfarer Receives Two Visitors at Midnight

The hour for the midday dinner approached and there was no sign of Miss Thackeray's return from the woods. Barnes sat for two exasperating hours on the porch and listened to the confident, flamboyant oratory of Mr. Lyndon Rushcroft. His gaze constantly swept the line of trees, and there were times when he failed to hear a word in whole sentences that rolled from the lips of the actor. He was beginning to feel acutely uneasy, when suddenly her figure issued from the woods at a point just above the Tavern. Instead of striking out at once across the meadow, she stopped and for as long as three or four minutes appeared to be carrying on a conversation with some invisible person among the trees she had just left behind. Then she waved her hand and turned her steps homeward. A bent old man came out of the woods and stood watching her progress across the open stretch. She had less than two hundred yards to traverse between the woods and the fence opposite the Tavern. The old man remained where he was until she reached the fence and prepared to mount it. Then, as Barnes ran down from the porch and across the road to assist her over the fence, he whirled about and disappeared.

"Aha," said Barnes chidingly: "politely escorted from the grounds, I see. If you had asked me I could have told you that trespassers are not welcome."