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 At the end of forty-five minutes he had covered the remaining distance between Greenfields station and Maitland Manor. For five minutes more he strode wearily over the side-path by the box hedge which set aside his ancestral acres from the public highway. At length, with an exclamation, he paused at the first opening in the living barrier: a wide entrance from which a blue-stone carriage drive wound away to the house, invisible in the waning light, situate in the shelter of the grove of trees that studded the lawn.

"Gasoline! Brrr!" said Maitland, shuddering and shivering with the combination of a nauseous odor and the night's coolness—the latter by now making itself as unpleasantly prominent as the former.

Though he hated the smell with all his heart, manfully inconsistent he raised his head, sniffing the air for further evidence; and got his reward in a sickening gust.

"Tank leaked," he commented with brevity. "Quart of the stuff must have trickled out right