for a young man to be seen walking alongside a girl than to be treading in her footsteps. Hitherto he had never opened his lips, nor did he now offer to speak as they walked on at a more sober pace a full yard apart, though side by side.

And presently May stole a shy look at her deliverer, and so looking finally banished from her mind any lingering doubt as to his identity with the owner of the 'Thucydides.' Another hundred yards, and then a very low sweet voice inquired

"Is Mr Richard Loder always so ready to hand to help his friends?"

"He hopes that he may always be so when Miss May Balfour wants his help."

"How did you know my name?" she asked timidly. "How did you know mine?" was the answer.

May looked at him, and then catching his eye, looked elsewhere.

"I saw it in a book of yours-a 'Thucydides,' don't you call it? At least I saw R. Loder,' and I think I guessed the rest."

"Well, it is Thucydides as a matter of fact," and Dick laughed quietly as he corrected the false quantity, "and I saw your name on a pocket-handkerchief, at least I saw M. B., and I didn't guess the rest till to-day."

"Then I am a cleverer person than you are," asserted May with an answering laugh. "But what right had you to keep my pocket-handkerchief, sir?"

"The same right as you had to keep my 'Thucydides,' answered the young man with some audacity. "More right perhaps. It was the only 'Thucydides' I had got as it happened, and I daresay you had got a good many more pockethandkerchiefs."

"I am sorry," she said penitently, "sorry if I inconvenienced you. But you would have inconvenienced me much more if it had been my only pocket-handkerchief, for as it happened I caught the most dreadful cold, and had to stay in the house I don't know how long."

"That's why I never found you when I went to the place

to look-I mean to try to give you back the pocket-handkerchief."

And after this they talked on as easily as they could about indifferent things till, when they were in sight of the Rectory gates, May suddenly stood still, and offering her hand to Dick, said, "Now, Mr Loder, I am going to say good-bye. I must be very inhospitable, and not ask you to come in. You see, we have never been properly introduced yet," smiling, "and my father might think it odd if I were to bring a strange young man in to tea. And then, besides, I must tell him. Oh, what shall I tell him? I always tell him everything, but I can't tell him all quite. Help me, please."

It was inexpressibly pleasing to Dick to be thus appealed to by the girl in all evident sincerity.

"I think I should simply say that you were frightened in the woods by some rough fellow; it is quite true, isn't it? He will probably think it was a poacher, and all the better. It certainly wouldn't do to frighten the old gentleman."

"How dare you call my father an old gentleman!" exclaimed May, up in arms in a moment. "He isn't old a bit."

"Of course he's not old really," apologised Dick; "I really beg your pardon; I wasn't thinking what I was saying. I know your father a little, that is, I have spoken to him, and I thought he was a very nice old-oh!" for May held up a warning finger, "I mean a very charming person. But I shouldn't frighten him all the same if I were you."

66

Perhaps not," said May indifferently. "But now I must say good-bye, Mr Loder. I am glad you know my father, and like him. And now," giving him her hand, "thank you so much for all your kindness to me. I am not the only person you have been kind to either,—no," as he began to protest, "I don't mean even that little boy. But a very grateful woman was telling me a great deal about Mr Dick Loder up in the woods to-day."

"She probably told you a lot of nonsense."

"It wasn't nonsense at all, and what's more, I did believe

and do believe every word of it. Seeing is believing, so there, Mr Loder. Good night, and thank you again," and extricating the little hand which Dick Loder had shown some inclination to retain for an unnecessarily long time in his own, May Balfour hurried into the Rectory, and there at tea she told her father just as much of her adventure as she felt inclined to.

"I think you ought to have asked the young man in to tea, dear," remarked the Rector.

"Oh, he's coming to tea to-morrow," answered the girl, perfectly certain in her own mind that he would so come, even though she had given him no definite invitation.

MR ALGERNON CHEVELY had not been having a very happy or a very successful day at the Mote; indeed it might be said that his visit from start to finish had been a failure.

It had been with considerable reluctance that Lord Leuchars had in the first instance yielded to his wife's solicitations and invited the young gentleman to shoot the Mote coverts that year. Personally he disliked Chevely's presence equally in the house and in the shooting-field, and his lordship was a man whom no one outside the family circle accounted as being given to taking unreasonable prejudices.

"He is neither a gentleman nor a sportsman, my dear," he had said to Lady Leuchars apropos of this young man; "he does not know how to behave himself when he is out shooting, and, what is more, he does not know how to talk to a lady. If you don't believe me, ask Betty."

"He always talks to me very pleasantly," pleaded Lady Leuchars. "I don't think that silly little goose Betty is at all nice to him or at all fair."

"Betty is anything but a goose," replied the father, who particularly disliked to hear any reflections cast upon his one and only child. "She is in most ways extremely sensible, and if she does not like a man, or a woman either, she can generally give a pretty good reason for not liking the one or the other."

"Well, you never asked the poor boy to shoot at all last year. And besides, they tell me that poor Lord Selcombe is

very shaky."

It was the former argument that carried the day with Lord Leuchars, who failed to see the exact relevancy of the remark about Lord Selcombe's shakiness. His good nature revolted from the idea of his seeming to be intentionally discourteous or unkind to the son of an old friend, and the end of it was that Algernon Chevely was invited to shoot, and accepted the invitation.

On the second day, when they were shooting Tasker Wood, Chevely, who was a notoriously jealous shot, in the last beat before luncheon elected rather rudely to claim two birds which Dick Loder had most certainly killed.

"What the devil is your fellow meddling with my birds for, Loder?" he shouted.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, I thought they were mine,—take them to Mr Chevely," was the answer; and as the man who was collecting the results of Dick's stand rather reluctantly obeyed the order, the incident might have been regarded as closed.

Unfortunately the beaters' luncheon was placed rather nearer the gentlemen's table than usual, round a corner where two broad drives intersect each other. Out of sight on a rather windy day is not always the same as out of earshot, and towards the end of luncheon, when tongues become loosened, the following conversation between two beaters came floating on the breeze :

"Them two birds as I had in my hand were young Dick's right enough, as I seed 'im shoot 'em. But that there Gingertop, he'd sell his own grandmother for a brace of pheasants. I'd jolly well like to bile 'im."

"And I'd jolly well not like to eat 'im, then; he's too sour for my liking is old Gingertop." Laughter is apt to be contagious: the dialogue was altogether too upsetting for one or two of the younger members of the shooting-party, who at once exploded, and as their seniors followed the bad example,