It is strange how, in moments of stress and trial, even in times of tragedy, the most commonplace thoughts will intrude themselves and the mind separate itself from the immediate events.

As Merode put the cold muzzle of the revolver to Ailsa's temple and she ought, one would have supposed, to have been deaf and blind to all things but the horror of her position, one of these strange mental lapses occurred, and her mind, travelling back over the years of her early schooldays, dwelt on a punishment task set her by her preceptress--the task of copying three hundred times the phrase "Discretion is the better part of valour." As the recollection of that time rose before her mental vision, the value of the phrase itself forced its worth upon her and, huddling back in the corner of the limousine, she clutched the frightened child to her and gave implicit obedience to Merode's command to make no effort to attract attention either by word or deed.

And he, fancying that he had thoroughly cowed her, withdrew the touch of the weapon from her temple, but held it ready for possible use in the grip of his thin, strong hand.
For a time the limousine kept straight on in its headlong course, then, of a sudden, it swerved to the left, the gleam of a river--all silver with moonlight--struck up through a line of trees on one side of the car, the blank unbroken dreariness of a stretch of waste land spread out upon the other; and presently, by the slowing down of the motor, Ailsa guessed that they were nearing their destination.

They reached it a few moments later, and a peep from the window, as the vehicle stopped, showed her the outlines of a ruined watermill--ghostly, crumbling, owl-haunted--looming black against the silver sky.
A crumbled wheel hung, rotten and moss-grown, over a dry water-course, where straggling willows stretched out from the bank and trailed their long, feathery ends a yard or so above the level of the weeds and grasses that carpeted the sandy bed of it, and along its edge--once built as a protection for the heedless or unwary, but now a ruin and a wreck--a moss-grown wall with a narrow, gateless archway made an irregular shadow on the moon-drenched earth.

She saw that archway and that dry water-course, and a new, strong hope arose within her.
Discretion had played its part; now it was time for Valour to take the stage.
"Come, get out--this is the end," said Merode, as he unlatched the door of the limousine and alighted.