It was all quite easy. She had taken off her coat and hat in Gracie's room; Joey made her way there—hurried into her things, and ran downstairs. She only met one servant; the place was in a dozy, Sunday-afternoon condition. She got out at a side door, and, avoiding the front drive, where she thought she might be seen and stopped, she darted away over well-kept lawns, crossed the ha-ha at a jump, and landed in the park. Here she slightly slackened her headlong pace—nobody would see her among the trees—and began to compose her letter of apology to Cousin Greta. She supposed she was being dreadfully rude, and it was a rudeness which would be horribly difficult to explain, without complaining of Gracie—naturally an unspeakable idea.

She had only got as far as "Dear Cousin Greta,—I hope I was not very rude, but ..." when she cleared the park, and crossed the straight marsh road. She had decided to go by the fields, in case somebody should be sent after her. If she kept in a line with the road, even at a distance of half a mile or so on the sea-ward side, she would be quite safe, she thought. She gave a glance around her to make sure of the lie of the land; it was all quite easy, for the October afternoon was clear, and a peculiar transparent luminosity lay on the glittering horizon. Then she plunged forward, concocting her letter to Cousin Greta as she went. It must certainly be written and sent off to-night, for there was no question about it, she had been disgracefully rude. Only she couldn't go on being a nuisance to people who didn't want her and invited her out only from a sense of duty.

"Dear Cousin Greta,—I hope I was not very rude, but I found I had to get back earlier than I expected, and ... and ... I didn't want to disturb you as you were lying down."

Joey didn't know that in the struggle to compose that difficult letter of apology to Cousin Greta she had diverged a little from the straight line that she had fixed for herself, and was bearing down farther from the road with every step she took. The letter took a great deal of pumping out; one had to try and be truthful, and at the same time no telltale. When politeness had to come in as well, it made each sentence most terribly difficult, and Joey wrestled with that letter in much affliction of spirit, and went farther and farther out of her way without ever seeing where she was going.

The bit about not wanting to disturb Cousin Greta was not absolutely true, because Joey had been really glad she had been lying down; still, perhaps it might pass—one couldn't say one was glad anyway.

"It was very kind of you to have me out," Joe went on; "thank you most awfully. About my going back to Redlands alone. I always go about alone at home, unless one of the others happens to be with me, so I hope you won't mind that. I'm not a kid, you know.

"Your affectionate cousin,
"Joey."

Joey finished the letter in her mind, and said it over to herself. It wouldn't take long to write down, that was one comfort—and she hoped it would make Cousin Greta understand she wasn't quite the ill-mannered girl she had seemed. And as she finished saying it and got it finally off her chest, she knew suddenly that she was very cold, and that a clammy white wall was surrounding her on every side, that beneath her feet was green bogginess, and of the road or any landmark there was not so much as a trace.

Joey had heard of the sea-roke in books, but that didn't make her very clear about it now she met it. She couldn't think how such a thick, dead-white fog could have come up without her noticing it; but here it was, that was very certain. She began to wish that she had kept to the high road, or left the composition of that difficult letter till she got back to Redlands. However, the roke was here, and she was on the Deeps and not the road; there was nothing for it but to keep as straight on as possible—or better still, turn to her left and strike the road.

Joey settled that would be the wisest thing to do, even if it took her out of her way at first; she turned to the left and went as straight as she could.

The road seemed to take a very long time to be reached; Joey couldn't think how she could have come so far from it. She stumbled on and on, finding the ground very quaggy, and walking exceedingly difficult. And then she jumped back only just in time, for she had all but walked into one of those deep ditches with slanting sides that drain the Deeps at intervals, and are a very real danger, with their thick ooze of mud below the water, and their slippery banks. Joey knew that she had crossed no ditch on her way down from the road; she began to feel a little pricking of uneasiness. She was very, very tired; her legs ached, and she seemed to herself to have walked miles and miles through this cold, clammy, white wall. And if she couldn't strike the road; how much farther might she not have to go? And was all this struggling getting her any nearer to Redlands?

Joey was not a nervous person, but she sat down at the side of the dyke to try and get her bearings, with rather a sinking heart. She had just remembered that in a fog you tend to wander in a circle; could she have been doing that all this long time when she hoped that she was at least getting on a little?

"What a bally nuisance!" she said aloud. Of course one couldn't acknowledge, even to oneself, that it was anything worse than that.

"I suppose I had better wait till the fog lifts," she said, wondering whether it were the close, white wall or the sinking sensation under her belt that made her voice so hollow. And just as she said it there came a little breeze, and the roke lifted for a minute, hanging around like cotton-wool clouds that wanted to settle on the earth and couldn't quite make up their minds to do so; and Joey saw, some thirty yards away from her—not the road—there was no sign of that—but a narrow plank bridge that crossed the dyke and, straight in a line with it, the mysterious Round Tower.

Joey did not waste a minute. She ran for her life, and was over the bridge before the roke came down again—baffling, clinging, frightening. But the tower was so near, and there was no dyke between; she had seen that. She ran straight on in the white darkness, and fell breathlessly against the rough wall of the tower five minutes later.

The roke was thicker than ever after that momentary lifting, but Joey didn't care now. There was shelter and safety in the tower, and she felt as though having reached it was the next best thing to being safe at Redlands. Noreen had told her it really was a good four miles from the College, but it seemed comfortingly close when one remembered that night on the leads.

Joey felt her way round it until she came to a narrow door standing at least three feet above the ground. She felt the ledge on which the door opened with her fingers, scrambled up to it, and tried the door. It was fastened, but she carried a strong pocket-knife, and inserting the stoutest blade into the chink, she forced back the bolt which secured it on the inside, and opened the door. Then, with a delightful thrill of mystery, she scrambled through into the tower.

It was black-dark inside, not white-dark as it was out; for the one narrow window on this ground floor was shuttered. Joey longed for an electric torch. She stumbled on a cautious step or two; then, growing bolder, walked on three or four more, with hands outstretched. Her hands came into contact with a narrow shelf, and on it, joy! she felt a match-box. Joey struck a match, feeling as though all her troubles were over.

The flash gave her a rough notion of grey walls and an iron ladder running up almost perpendicularly to the right of her, and it showed something else as well—a lantern that stood upon the same shelf where she had found the matches. Joey seized upon it, as a shipwrecked mariner might on a spar, and lit it. Holding it in her hand, she felt strong enough to face anything; it was the darkness which had been so frightening.

Holding the lantern on high she set out to explore her refuge; after all, for whatever reason, it was rather exciting to find oneself in the mysterious Round Tower at last.

The floor above was so high that the rays of her lantern could not reach it, but she was sure there was another floor because of the ladder, which obviously must lead somewhere. Joey thought she would go up it presently and see for herself, but at present the ground floor of the tower presented attractions. It was strewn with a quantity of loose stones and dÉbris of all kinds, except in one place—one can hardly say corner in a round tower—where it would seem to have been swept smooth. Joey, having wandered round the loose-jointed grey walls, examining them with interest, came to the place where the dÉbris was comparatively scanty, and held her lantern down to light the place.

A voice came up to her from below the floor, a rather thin, peevish voice that sounded exceedingly tired, and had a curious accent.

"You are at least two hours earlier than you said you would be; how can you then expect me to be ready?"

Joey quite jumped—the voice was so entirely unexpected. Then she realised that she must be taken for somebody else.

"I can't be anyone you expected two hours later, because I didn't know myself about walking home and this old fog," she said. "Do tell me, are you down a trap-door, or what?"

A square of floor lifted with some difficulty, and a head appeared—the head of a pale, unhealthy-looking young man, with large, startled, blue eyes.

"I say, I hope I didn't frighten you coming in like this," Joey said politely. "But the fog—the sea-roke, I think they call it, is so beastly, and I couldn't find my way back."

The young man came altogether out from the trap-door. Joey didn't think much of his nerves; his hands were trembling and he looked as though Gavin could have knocked him down quite easily.

"Do you live here?" Joey asked, as he did not speak. "I hope you don't mind my coming in like this; but Noreen, one of the Redlands girls, tells me that the Deeps are really rather dangerous when the roke is about."

The young man seemed to recover his breath.

"You are a Redlands young lady, are you? Surely your mistress does not know that you are wandering about the Deeps alone?"

"Miss Conyngham? No, I don't suppose she does," Joey said easily. "I didn't know myself till it happened, but of course I ought to have come by the road."

"It would be much safer," the young man said impressively. He did not answer Joey's question about living in the tower; but proceeded to tell her story upon story of accidents happening on the Deeps to people who strayed there in the fog or the dark. Joey thought his stories were a little like the Cautionary Tales; from his account the sea-roke perpetually lay in wait, in company with horrid oozy spots where people disappeared with no trace left to tell how they had died. His stories were so interesting that Joey forgot her desire to explore, and sat by his side on a great block of fallen stone, listening with all her ears, and foreseeing a thrilling time in Blue Dorm this evening. She was so absorbed that she never noticed the lightening of the roke, until a long, narrow bar of sunshine fell through a chink in the shutters of the window, making the red glow of the lantern look pale and unnatural. Then she jumped up in a hurry, and held out her hand. The post went out at six on Sundays, and she still had four miles to walk before she could write that apology to Cousin Greta. She must go at once now it would be safe to cross the piece of marsh-land to the road. She held out her hand to the young man.

"Good-bye," she said. "You've been a brick to me, and I've enjoyed your stories most awfully. I've had no end of a good time here, and it's jolly thrilling, when you haven't done it, to know you might have been drowned so easily, isn't it? It's been a topping afternoon. Thanks ever so."

She shook hands with the young man, whose easily scared breath seemed to have departed again, for he gasped and said nothing.

Joey turned her back upon the Round Tower and turned her face in the direction of the road, now plainly to be seen. It was not till she had reached it that it struck her that she had been rather stupid not to ask leave to come again, and bring her friends. But perhaps now the young man was used to her, he wouldn't mind if three or four of them turned up one afternoon, and asked for some more of his stories, and permission to explore? Joey settled in her own mind that she would share the privilege with Noreen and Gabrielle at least. But one couldn't go back to ask leave, with the thought of the six o'clock post and that letter of apology still to be written for it.

Joey covered the ground at her best pace, never looking back; reached the road quite successfully and, by dint of running most of the way, arrived, panting, at the side door of Redlands, just as the gong sounded for five o'clock tea.