for that visit to the baker's. Sabina's face softened, and her

contemptuous nose descended from its altitude of scorn; she gave
me one shy glance of kindness, and then concentrated her

attention upon Mercy knocking at the Wicket Gate. I felt awfully
mean as regarded Edward; but what could I do? I was in Gaza,

gagged and bound; the Philistines hemmed me in.
The same evening the storm burst, the bolt fell, and--to continue

the metaphor--the atmosphere grew serene and clear once more.
The evening service was shorter than usual, the vicar, as he

ascended the pulpit steps, having dropped two pages out of his
sermon-case,--unperceived by any but ourselves, either at the

moment or subsequently when the hiatus was reached; so as we
joyfully shuffled out I whispered Edward that by racing home at

top speed we should make time to assume our bows and arrows (laid
aside for the day) and play at Indians and buffaloes with Aunt

Eliza's fowls--already strolling roostwards, regardless of their
doom--before that sedately stepping lady could return. Edward

hung at the door, wavering; the suggestion had unhallowed charms.
At that moment Sabina issued primly forth, and, seeing Edward,

put out her tongue at him in the most exasperating manner
conceivable; then passed on her way, her shoulders rigid, her

dainty head held high. A man can stand very much in the cause of
love: poverty, aunts, rivals, barriers of every sort,--all these

only serve to fan the flame. But personal ridicule is a shaft
that reaches the very vitals. Edward led the race home at a

speed which one of Ballantyne's heroes might have equalled but
never surpassed; and that evening the Indians dispersed Aunt

Eliza's fowls over several square miles of country, so that the
tale of them remaineth incomplete unto this day. Edward himself,

cheering wildly, pursued the big Cochin-China cock till the bird
sank gasping under the drawing-room window, whereat its mistress

stood petrified; and after supper, in the shrubbery, smoked a
half-consumed cigar he had picked up in the road, and declared to

an awe-stricken audience his final, his immitigable, resolve to
go into the army.

The crisis was past, and Edward was saved! . . . And
yet . . . sunt lachrymae rerem . . . to me watching the cigar-

stump alternately pale and glow against the dark background of
laurel, a vision of a tip-tilted nose, of a small head poised

scornfully, seemed to hover on the gathering gloom--seemed to
grow and fade and grow again, like the grin of the Cheshire cat--

pathetically, reproachfully even; and the charms of the baker's
wife slipped from my memory like snow-wreaths in thaw. After

all, Sabina was nowise to blame: why should the child be
punished? To-morrow I would give them the slip, and stroll round

by her garden promiscuous-like, at a time when the farmer was
safe in the rick-yard. If nothing came of it, there was no harm

done; and if on the contrary. . . !
THE BURGLARS

It was much too fine a night to think of going to bed at once,
and so, although the witching hour of nine P.M. had struck,

Edward and I were still leaning out of the open window in our
nightshirts, watching the play of the cedar-branch shadows on the

moonlit lawn, and planning schemes of fresh devilry for the
sunshiny morrow. From below, strains of the jocund piano

declared that the Olympians were enjoying themselves in their
listless, impotent way; for the new curate had been bidden to

dinner that night, and was at the moment unclerically proclaiming
to all the world that he feared no foe. His discordant

vociferations doubtless started a train of thought in Edward's
mind, for the youth presently remarked, a propos of nothing

that had been said before, "I believe the new curate's rather
gone on Aunt Maria."

I scouted the notion. "Why, she's quite old," I said. (She must
have seen some five-and-twenty summers.)

"Of course she is," replied Edward, scornfully. "It's not her,
it's her money he's after, you bet!"

"Didn't know she had any money," I observed timidly.
"Sure to have," said my brother, with confidence. "Heaps and

heaps."
Silence ensued, both our minds being busy with the new situation

thus presented,--mine, in wonderment at this flaw that so often
declared itself in enviable natures of fullest endowment,--in a

grown-up man and a good cricketer, for instance, even as this
curate; Edward's (apparently), in the consideration of how such a

state of things, supposing it existed, could be best turned to
his own advantage.

"Bobby Ferris told me," began Edward in due course, "that there
was a fellow spooning his sister once--"

"What's spooning?" I asked meekly.
"Oh, _I_ dunno," said Edward, indifferently. It's--it's--it's

just a thing they do, you know. And he used to carry notes and
messages and things between 'em, and he got a shilling almost

every time."
"What, from each of 'em?" I innocently inquired.

Edward looked at me with scornful pity. "Girls never have any
money," he briefly explained. "But she did his exercises and got

him out of rows, and told stories for him when he needed it--and
much better ones than he could have made up for himself. Girls

are useful in some ways. So he was living in clover, when
unfortunately they went and quarrelled about something."

"Don't see what that's got to do with it," I said.
"Nor don't I," rejoined Edward. "But anyhow the notes and things

stopped, and so did the shillings. Bobby was fairly cornered,
for he had bought two ferrets on tick, and promised to pay a

shilling a week, thinking the shillings were going on for ever,
the silly young ass. So when the week was up, and he was being

dunned for the shilling, he went off to the fellow and said,
`Your broken-hearted Bella implores you to meet her at sundown,--

by the hollow oak, as of old, be it only for a moment. Do not
fail!' He got all that out of some rotten book, of course.

The fellow looked puzzled and said,--
"`What hollow oak? I don't know any hollow oak.'

"`Perhaps it was the Royal Oak?' said Bobby promptly, 'cos he saw
he had made a slip, through trusting too much to the rotten book;

but this didn't seem to make the fellow any happier."
"Should think not," I said, "the Royal Oak's an awful low sort of

pub."
"I know," said Edward. "Well, at last the fellow said, `I think

I know what she means: the hollow tree in your father's paddock.
It happens to be an elm, but she wouldn't know the difference.

All right: say I'll be there.' Bobby hung about a bit, for he
hadn't got his money. `She was crying awfully,' he said. Then

he got his shilling."
"And wasn't the fellow riled," I inquired, "when he got to the

place and found nothing?"
"He found Bobby," said Edward, indignantly. "Young Ferris was a

gentleman, every inch of him. He brought the fellow another
message from Bella: `I dare not leave the house. My cruel

parents immure me closely If you only knew what I suffer. Your
broken-hearted Bella.' Out of the same rotten book. This made

the fellow a little suspicious,'cos it was the old Ferrises who
had been keen about the thing all through: the fellow, you see,

had tin."
"But what's that got to--" I began again.