1930-12-17 — Page 19

CHINA MAIL CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT, 1930.

19

ASTRAY IN THE SNOW.

By WINIFRED A. RATCLIFF.

"DERRY, how perfectly awful! What "face" they could call to their command to thing where his forehead had come into

what do you suppose 'we can do?" meet their emergency. The snow, which "The blighter! Wait until here! ad commenced to fall several hours before, come in under the shed, for goodness sake. had already spread a white cloak over road, Kit," and Derek Amberly jerked his pretty Ledges, and surrounding fields, which, to- wife further beneath the very inadequate gether with the darkness, baffled all sense shelter which the diminutive railway station of direction. boasted, while he continued to stare with Kitty clung tightly to her husband's savage eyes into the uncompromising dark.grm and sternly endeavoured to repress the panicky feeling which rose each time she "If this isn't the very deuce!" he muttried to look ahead. Suppose they missed tered, kicking the light snow from under the turning! Suppose they wandered on his feet furiously. "What possessed me to and on until, overcome by fatigue and cold, agree to this fool scheme is more than I can they dropped by the wayside! The picture understand..

01 herself lying stiff and frozen was so vivid that a half sob self-pity involuntarily escap to her.

"ness.

A few days before "the scheme" had seemed alluring enough. That was when he and Kitty had unexpectedly found them- Derek, who had been striding by her selves thrown upon their own resources for side, stolid and silent, caught the sound and the Christmas holidays. The prospect of turned a harassed face towards the giri. apending the festive season alone was one "Kit, you're you're not going to funk which neither of them particularly relished, it, old woman?" and when Jimmy Masters had mooted the notion of opening his week-end cottage in Dovecote Heath and, further, suggested that the Amberlys should join his wife and him- self there for a couple of days, Kitty and Derek had simply jumped at it.

Kitty laughed a trifle shakily as she put the fascinatingly grim vision of her own corpse behind her.

contact with them.

"Derry Derry! Are you hurt?" Kitty's voice was frantic.

"Not a bit of it. What about you, chick?"

"I think I've wrenched my knce a little, but I'll get along. Oh, Derry, do let us get on! If I have much more of this I shall be à lunatic myself before Christmas morning."

Now they were on the way once more, this time more slowly than ever, for Kitty's knee proved terribly painful, and she was soon limping badly.

It seemed a dreary age before Derek gave a glad cry:

4

"Look! look a light! This must be the cottage at last. Come on,. darling, I believe our troubles are over. My flashlight-ah! here. Yes, yes; do look, Kit-the name is What about on the gate-Rose Cottage.' it, old girl; what have you to say now, eh?"

Then he gave a gasp, for Kitty had re- sponded by quietly dropping to the ground in a dead faint. It was, the work of a "Funking it? Don't be an ass, Derry moment to pick the girl up in his sturdy Only-only, I do wish we could reach that arms and race to the house door. Without tarning! I'm horribly afraid we shall pass even pausing to knock, he managed some- Christmas in a country cottage! What it without seeing it: the whole landscape how to open it, and strode across a tiny hall a cosily-furnished, brightly-lighted could be more charming, or half so novel? seems exactly the same, with the snow cover into

room, The cottage lay, tucked delightfully outing everything."

"Nonsense retorted Derry, with a of the world, three miles from the railway

"Jim, I auy! Where are you?" Derry's station, but as Jimmy owned a runabout car good deal more assurance than he was feel- voice ran frantically over the house: the he was proudly independent of the trains. g. "We haven't come nearly far enough small, ominously still figure which he had For Derek, less fortunate, it had been ar- for the turn yet. I came down with Jim a now lowered to the Chesterfield was filling ranged that he and Kitty should make the couple of years back, and I distinctly re-him with agonized terror. ten-mile journey from town by train, to be member every inch of the way we why, met at Heath station by Jimmy with the here it is!" and he stopped abruptly at a car, the Masters having been installed at spot where the hedge on the left hand was the cottage the day previously. It had all broken. seemed delightfully easy and pleasant, but- something had evidently gone very wrong. Certainly the Amberlys were not to blame, for here they were, at precisely eight o'clock on Christmas Eve, two solitary figures, standing upon the platform of Heath station. Jimmy and the car were not to be scen. Derry peered forward in a futile en- deavour to discern anything through the solid blackness. Suddenly he turned to the girl.

"It's no use, Kit. I'm afraid there's nothing for it except walking it," he an- nounced. "The idiot has miscalculated the train's arrival, I suppose. "It's absolutely

"But-but I thought you said it was. further?"

"We must have walked more quickly than I thought: this is the turn all right," Derek responded easily, brushing aside his previous argument in true man fashion. "Come and look for yourself."

There was a sound of rapid footsteps over his head; now they were on the stairs.

"Jimmy, how could you

"Derry began, then the words froze on his lips.

Through the further doorway appeared an apparition that might have stepped from a frame in some old picture gallery. It was the figure of a man of about Derry's own age and bulld, dressed in the handsome flow. ing garments of the Stuart period, perfect in every detail, even to the picturesque The opening, upon a nearer inspection, feather-loaded hat which the strange vision did indeed prove to be the entrance to an- held in its band. Derry stared with gog- other lane, and the travellers turned almost gling eyes at the man, from his powdered thankfully into it.

white head to his red-heeled shoes. Who, "We'll be there in no time," declared in pity's name, was this silent, mediaeval Derek. "Phew! what a beastly night!" he, creature, and what did it all mean? continued, as the wind, which was now Then in a flash the ghastly explanation directly before them, flung a host of ice-cold came to him: The escaped lunatic of Gartly impossible for us to stay here; there isn't flakes into their faces with stinging force. Private Asylum! Yes, yes, that was it. even a waiting-room, and the porter is lock- "Pity any poor blighter with no destination Derry recollected reading that the man was ing up his office. Come along, old girl, let's on an evening of this sort. I was reading, young and rich; doubtless his wealth had at lunch, of one of the inmates from the enabled him to play the characters he put the best face we can upon it, and step Gartly Frivate Asylum who escaped last imagined himself to be in costume. out. Straight down the road from the sta- tion, and first turning to the left. Jimmy's night. If he hasn't been found, I suppose Assuredly this, was the rig-out in which he

He was inter- had escaped yesterday. is the only house in the lane; you simply rupted by a barely suppressed scream from His fascinated gaze was still fixed upon can't miss 'Rose Cottage." "

the man, and now he noticed how wild were With that Derry slipped a firm hand "You tactless idiot! What on earth do his eyes, how deadly white and strained his beneath his wife's arm, gripped his "week-you want to talk about lunatics at large for? face. Was he dangerous-and what of ender" with the other, and stepped into the And the Gartly Asylum is only four or five Jimmy and his wife? "Humour a lunatic road, while the porter, who by now had miles away. I-oh!"

always!" The words hammered themselves finished his locking-up, gazed after the pair A much louder scream broke from the on Derry's brain, Yes, that was the advice with an expression of curiosity, not unmixed girl's lips as both she and Derek went in every novel he had over read of escaped with contempt, upon tia face. "What them sprawling into the ditch by the roadside, at maniacs. He town folks 'ull do is past crediting," he a point where it widened unexpectedly "Derry, I-I muttered, as he turned in the opposite direc- across their path. The ditch was not deep, It was Kitty's voice, shaky and be tion.

but the bottom of it was strewn with broken wildered.. 'Meanwhile Kitty and Derek were bricks, and Derry, as he gathered himself speedily finding that they required all the up, was conscious of a warm, sticky "some-

he'll be out in this —

Kitty.

(Continued on Page 21;)