Twice, in circumstances most unusual and disquieting, she had witnessed an attack on John Armitage by an unknown enemy.

She recalled now a certain pathos of his figure as she first saw him leaning against the tree watching the turbulent little stream, and she was impatient to find how her sympathy went out to him.

It made no difference who John Armitage was; his enemy was a coward, and the horror of such a menace to a man's life appalled her.

She passed a mounted policeman, who recognized her and raised his hand in salute, but the idea of reporting the strange affair in the strip of woodland occurred to her only to be dismissed.

She felt that here was an ugly business that was not within the grasp of a park patrolman, and, moreover, John Armitage was entitled to pursue his own course in matters that touched his life so closely.