And yet--Wales?
Wales?
I pulled myself up with a jerk.

In that case, how did she come to be passing by Basingstoke?
Was the postmark a blind?
Had she hired someone to take the letter somewhere for her, on purpose to put me off on a false track?
I could hardly think so.

Besides, the time was against it.

I saw Hilda at Nathaniel's in the morning; the very same evening I received the envelope with the Basingstoke postmark.
"If I were in his place." Yes, true; but, now I come to think on it, WERE the positions really parallel?
Hilda was not flying for her life from justice; she was only endeavouring to escape Sebastian--and myself.

The instances she had quoted of the mountaineer's curious homing instinct--the wild yearning he feels at moments of great straits to bury himself among the nooks of his native hills--were they not all instances of murderers pursued by the police?
It was abject terror that drove these men to their burrows.