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yer step or she’ll have ye tied up in knots.’
    ‘I’ll do my best to keep out of Delilah’s way. Now, what precautions are you taking or do you want me to take?’
    ‘Ah, time enough, time enough.’ O’Brien stretched lazily. ‘I’ve got a gun, and I’ve not lost the habit of using it. And I’ve a feeling the joker that’s after me will keep his word about leaving me to digest me Christmas dinner in peace. Did y’ever hear the story about Lord Cosson and the goat?’
    The rest of the evening was spent by O’Brien in relating scandalous anecdotes, most of which referred to persons in high office and sustained more than adequately his reputation for contempt of authority. Later, lying in bed, Nigel heard the front door bang and steps going away towards the hut in the garden. His mind was dazed by the mass of contradictions his host’s character presented, though he had the feeling that there was a clue, if only he could grasp it, which would bring them all into a visible pattern. Out of his sleepy musings, three points emerged and took shape. First, that O’Brien took these threats much more seriously than he had suggested to Sir John Strangeways. Second, that the light he had thrown on part of the situation left other parts of it in yet deeper darkness. Third, that even under the circumstances it was rather an odd party. Nigel might or might not have been enlightened could he have looked in through the hut window, and seen the wry smile on O’Brien’s lips as he settled into his truckle bed, and heard those passionate lines from an Elizabethan dramatist which the little airman whispered to the impassive stars.

III
    A CHRISTMAS TALE
    NIGEL WAS AWAKENED by a thunderous knocking on the door.
    ‘Oh, God, it’s happened!’ was the first thought that rushed into his mind. It was followed by a banal but terribly clear image of a sentry sleeping at his post. He wetted his lips and croaked, ‘Come in!’ The face of Arthur Bellamy appeared round the door. It was split by a divine-like grin, which changed rapidly into almost comic solicitude when he saw Nigel’s expression. ‘Gorblime, Mr Strangeways, sir, you don’t half look ill. White as a sheet, you are, and no error. The colonel says breakfast at nine; but perhaps you’d rather have it up here?’
    ‘It’s all right, Arthur,’ Nigel answered a bit shakily. ‘I’m not ill. It was just—just a nightmare.’
    Arthur tapped his pancake of a nose and said sagely, ‘Ar. Too much of the colonel’s brandy. Plays ’avoc with the lights, it does an’ all. When the gastric juices curdle, wot eventuates? Mental disorder, sir. Nightmares. Ar.’
    Nigel had not time to dispute the scientific accuracy of this dictum, for a resonant baritone voice was singing below the window:
    ‘And back to back by the crimson Slaney—’
    Arthur Bellamy flung back his head and began to supply a faux-bourdon in a shrill and dismal falsetto. Nigel, never one to be behindhand in such matters, was soon bellowing out a raucous obbligato. A dog or two from the village over the hill joined in: and Lord Marlinworth in his bedroom at Chatcombe Towers tapped his fingers on the eiderdown with dignified deprecation.
    When the rendering was over and Arthur departed, Nigel looked out of the window. Fergus O’Brien was standing in the garden below: there was a stack of holly under his arm, and his head was cocked at a hedge-sparrow which moved towards him mouselike over the grass. Soon two thrushes, a blackbird and a robin were standing around him also, their feathers puffed out against the cold, waiting for the bread he had in his coat pocket. What an idyllic scene, how far removed from nightmares, thought Nigel, till the airman turned and he saw in his other pocket the telltale bulge of a revolver, bringing him back to the dark and dangerous reality in which they were living. O’Brien looked up and saw him at the window.
    ‘Go in now,’ he exclaimed, ‘or ye’ll catch your death