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                              THE HILLMAN




         [Illustration: What followed came like a thunder-clap.
                     FRONTISPIECE. _See page 304._]




                              The Hillman


                        By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM


                  Author of "The Kingdom of The Blind"
                    "Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo," Etc.


                             [Illustration]


                           WITH FRONTISPIECE
                            By GEORGE AVISON


                           A. L. BURT COMPANY
         Publishers                                   New York
         Published by Arrangement with LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY




                           _Copyright, 1917_,
                     BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

                         _All rights reserved_

                        Published, January, 1917
                    Reprinted, January, 1917 (twice)
                         February, 1917 (twice)
                        March, 1917; April, 1917




                              THE HILLMAN

                                   I


Louise, self-engrossed, and with a pleasant sense of detachment from the
prospective inconveniences of the moment, was leaning back among the
cushions of the motionless car. Her eyes, lifted upward, traveled past
the dimly lit hillside, with its patchwork of wall-enclosed fields, up
to where the leaning clouds and the unseen heights met in a misty sea of
obscurity.

The moon had not yet risen, but a faint and luminous glow, spreading
like a halo about the topmost peak of that ragged line of hills,
heralded its approach. Louise sat with clasped hands, rapt and engrossed
in the esthetic appreciation of a beauty which found its way but seldom
into her town-enslaved life. She listened to the sound of a distant
sheepbell. Her eyes swept the hillsides, vainly yet without curiosity,
for any sign of a human dwelling. The voices of her chauffeur and her
maid, who stood talking heatedly together by the bonnet of the car,
seemed to belong to another world. She had the air of one completely yet
pleasantly detached from all material surroundings.

The maid, leaving her discomfited companion with a final burst of
reproaches, came to the side of the car. Her voice, when she addressed
her mistress, sank to a lower key, but her eyes still flashed with
anger.

"But would _madame_ believe it?" she exclaimed. "It is incredible! The
man Charles there, who calls himself a chauffeur of experience, declares
that we are what he calls 'hung up'! Something unexpected has happened
to the magneto. There is no spark. Whose fault can that be, I ask, but
the chauffeur's? And such a desert we have reached! We have searched the
map together. We are thirty miles from any town, many miles from even a
village. What a misfortune!"

Louise turned her head regretfully away from the mysterious spaces. She
listened patiently, but without any sort of emotion, to her maid's flow
of distressed words. She even smiled very faintly when the girl had
finished.

"Something will happen," she remarked indifferently. "There is no need
for you to distress yourself. There must be a farmhouse or shelter of
some sort near. If the worst comes to the worst, we can spend the night
in the car. We have plenty of furs and rugs. You are not a good
traveler, Aline. You lose heart too soon."

The girl's face was a study.

"_Madame_ speaks of spending the night in the car!" she exclaimed. "Why,
one has not eaten since luncheon, and of all the country through which
we have passed, this is the loneliest and dreariest spot."

Louise leaned forward and called to the chauffeur.

"Charles," she asked, "what has happened? Are we really stranded here?"

The man's head emerged from the bonnet. He came round to the side of the
car.

"I am very sorry, madam," he reported, "but something has gone wrong
with the magneto. I shall have to take it to pieces before I can tell
exactly what is wrong. At present I can't get a spark