glades descending here and there between them like broad green rivers. Above, the valley narrows almost to a gorge, with scarps of limestone, grey and red-s

e by a Norman bridge of ten arches its brook joins a large river, and their waters, scarcely mingle

time. For the house, with its round-shouldered Jacobean gables, its stone-cropped roof, lichen-spotted plaster, and ill-kept yew hedge, has an air of resignation to decay, well-bred but spiritless, and communicates it to the whole of its small landscape. Our old builders chose their sites for shelter rather than for view; and this-and perhaps a well of exquisite water bubbling by the garden gate on the very lip of the brook-must ex

d, our guns were banging to victory off Cape Trafalgar. Here, at home, on the edge of the Cleeve woods, the air hung heavy and soundless, its silence emphasised rather than broken now and again by the kuk-kuk of a phe

w his way perfectly, although he followed no path; yet, coming to the fringe of the woodland, he turned aside and skirted the fence as if unexpectedly headed off by

friend or two, had shot the coverts after a fashion. The blow had shaken him: uncertainty, anxiety of this sort for his heir and only child, must prey upon any man's mind. Still (his friends argued) the cure lay in his lifelong habits; these were the firm ground on which he would feel his footing again and recover himself-since, if so colourless a man could be said to nurse a passion, it was for his game. A strict Tory by breeding, and less by any process of intellectual conviction than from sheer inability to see himself in any other light, indolent and contemptuous of politics, in game-preserving alone he

man of reserved and sensitive soul, into which no fellow-creature had been allowed to look, he told his secret to no one, not even to his wife. She-a Roman Catholic and devout-had lived for many years almost entirely apart from him, occupyin

at my cottage. How's a man to sleep, knowing the whole place so scandalously overstocked-the birds

erly. "He'll soon weed us out neat and clean. I w

p sharply. "Know anythin

th another. "See Hannaford's

ve a man's duty comes before his church-going at this time o' year;

or me how much money Bess Hannaford wore on her back. So even going to

lagging Charley Hannaford with argyments. Coverts is covert

tell he was getting on famous as a footman, and liked his place. Seems to have changed his mind, or e

acklin stolidly, puffing a

his words-"you've cast an eye, no doubt, ove

in no

e looks

h. Anyth

p to his triumph. "Not much-only I took a stroll down to town Saturday night, and droppe

wed it. "The gormed rascal! That was a cl

n't get a charge of buckshot somewhere into Charles Hannaford

rd home, cunningly affixed it to a roosting-bough, and left it there looking as natural as life. On arriving at the tree early next morning he found Macklin (to whom he had not imparted the secret) already there, and staring aloft with a puzzled grin. Someone had decorated the bird during the night with a thin collar of white linen. "Very curio

y this time the whole countryside knew of Jim's visit to the "tackydermatist," an

sound of footsteps; and the sound, when it fell on his ears, held something unfamiliar. (Jim was unacquainted with sabots.) He stood perfectly still, let it go by, and at once prepared to follow-not that his suspicions connected this stranger with Charley Hannaford, who habitu

un in hand, keeping his quarry's head-and shoulders well in sight over the coping. This was laborious work, for he plunged ankle-deep at e

fence. Abroad he had dreamed of them, night after night; but he did not pause to regreet them now, for his thoughts were busy ahead, in the Court now directly

ck it was called, and as a child Walter à Cleeve had climbed about it a score of times in search of madrepores; for a gully ran down beside it, half choked with fern and scree, and from the gully here and there a ledge ran out across

face of the White Rock. But the wiliest poacher cannot provide against such an accident as this-that a young gentleman, supposed to be in France, should return by an unfrequented path, and by reason of an awkward French boot catch his toe and slide precipitately, without warning, down twenty feet

on the wire which Hannaford was stealthily trying to pocket, and grew wide with understanding. Then they sought the gro

, you don't look overjoy

as caught, for certain: nevertheles

ather sudden,

w grains into his palm and sniffed at them. "Better

bout. I say, M

Jim B

oo. Be you goin

y, you know, and I don't care any more

asty tumble o

omething of a spill. But

or two more, now-and the rock, if I remember, sloping outwards just here below

n's where I came over-I couldn't have fallen quite so wide-" he began to expl

it Providence, all the

an was desperate, and he-he,

me he reached the hedge there and peered over, Walter had disappeared; and Jim- considerably puzzled, half inclined to believe that the stranger had walked over the edge of the White Rock and broken hi

in Jim failed to recognise him. And Jim peered over the fence th

ly, as if chewing each word. "I hadn't even heard

rge, and yet he saw it, and his senses apprised every foot of the long fall beyond. While he thought it out, keeping tension on himself to meet Charley Hannaford's gaze with a deceptive indifference, his heart swelled at the humiliation of it all. He had escaped from a two years' captivity-and, Heavens! how he had suffered over there, in France! He had run risks: his adventures-bating one unhappy blot upon them, which surely did not infect the whole-might almost be called heroic. And he

shifty smile. "You'll have a lot to tell 'em do

at I've been through. One doesn't escape out of France in these d

ely,

precedent, you understand. I intend to live at home

be s

this, you are not to suppose I shall forget it. The others suspect

, sir. I know a gentlema

careless magnanimity, conscious of the sorry part he was playing, yet not wholly without hope that

nd broke off cursing to reconstruct the scene from the beginning and imagine himself carrying it off with contemptuous fearlessness, at

to read them. After a meditative minute or so he coiled up his wire, pocketed it, and made off

to report to Macklin that Charley Hannaford had an accomplice, that the pair were layi