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There was no answer.

‘Can I offer you a lift, ma’am, if you’re going my way? The hour is late, and the weather none too pleasant for tramping these high moors.’

Still there was no answer.

‘You needn’t be afraid of Dapple,’ he assured her. ‘He’ll stand still as a rock now, if you’ll climb up.’

‘Thank you,’ she answered at last, with a hesitating step forward, and the voice was hoarse and constrained.

‘Come round to the other side then. Here, give me your bag.’

The woman crossed in front of Dapple–who backed a foot or so uneasily–came around to the step, and handed up her bag. It was a two-handled bag, of japanned leather, and Doctor Unonius, as he took it from her and rested it against the splashboard, noted also that it was exceedingly heavy. He held out his hand. The woman grasped it, and clambered up beside him.

He gave a sharp look at her and called to Dapple. The horse pulled himself together and broke into a brisk trot, which continued for hard upon half a mile before either occupant of the gig broke silence.

For Doctor Unonius was considering. Though a student he was a man of considerable courage and cool-headed in emergency, as he was now not a little pleased to prove, for hitherto life had provided few emergencies to test him. But here was an emergency, and–at this time of night, and in this place–it looked to be an ugly one. He had to deal with a discovery, and the discovery was this.

The hand he had just gripped was no woman’s at all, but the hand of a man.

He stole another glance at his companion. She, or he, was leaning forward in a huddled attitude to meet the wind which now, as they rounded an edge of the down, blew crosswise athwart the gig and a little ahead. Nothing of face could be seen, only–and this dimly by the starshine–the hand that grasped the shawl. But it was enough; a man’s hand, the doctor could almost swear. He recognised this with a slight thrill. He was not afraid, but he was undeniably excited.

What on earth should a man be doing in woman’s clothes, on this road and at this hour? The road led no whither but to Polpeor and the coast, and passed on its way no human habitation but Landeweddy Farm and a couple of cottages half a mile beyond it, close under the dip of the hill. . . .

‘You are shivering,’ said Doctor Unonius, after a pause.

The crouching figure nodded, but did not speak.

‘Are you cold? Here, take some more of the rug.’

For a moment there was no answer, then a shake of the head.

‘Ill, then? Feverish? I am a doctor: let me feel your pulse.’

His companion made a quick gesture as if to hide the hand grasping the gig-rail: but after another pause, and as if reluctantly, it was reached across. The other still clutched the shawl.

Doctor Unonius, drawing off his right-hand glove with his teeth, reached across also and laid his fingers in professional fashion on the wrist. Yes; he was right. The wrist was a man’s wrist, large and bony. He screwed up his eyes and peered down as well as he might at the upturned hand. He could see that the finger-tips were square, and the palm, if he mistook not, showed a row of callosities at the base of the fingers. Something in the pulse’s beat caught his attention, and almost at the same moment his nostrils expanded suspiciously. Doctor Unonius had a delicate sense of smell.

‘This man,’ he thought, ‘is in a blue fright; and moreover, and although he smokes a deal of rank tobacco, I am open to bet he is a butcher by trade.’

He relaxed the pressure of his fingers very slightly, and the hand was sharply withdrawn.