The heath was covered with golden patches of flowering gorse, gleaming magnificently in the light of the bright spring sunshine.
Behind one of these clumps I took up my position, so as to command both the gateway of the Hall and a long stretch of the road upon either side.It had been deserted when I left it, but now I saw a cyclist riding down it from the opposite direction to that in which I had come.He was clad in a dark suit, and I saw that he had a black beard.On reaching the end of the Charlington grounds he sprang from his machine and led it through a gap in the hedge, disappearing from my view.
A quarter of an hour passed and then a second cyclist appeared.
This time it was the young lady coming from the station.
I saw her look about her as she came to the Charlington hedge.
An instant later the man emerged from his hiding-place, sprang upon his cycle, and followed her.In all the broad landscape those were the only moving figures, the graceful girl sitting very straight upon her machine, and the man behind her bending low over his handle-bar, with a curiously furtive suggestion in every movement.She looked back at him and slowed her pace.