shire yed is all he can boast on." "The rest will come, madam," said his Grace. "I'll warrant him true Derbyshire breed." Then he turned again to Drew. "Whatever the stakes

I treble them."

"Thank your Grace; we was faighting for my top-coat."

"You shall hav mine then to keep you from a chill."

At the duke's bidding a groom unfastened the great-coat that was strapped to his saddle. "Put it on him."

It covered William from head to foot, a masterpiece of tailoring, gold-buttoned, silk-lined, sable-collared and cuffed. Before the month's end a young would-be buck who had just come into property down Crich way gave him ten acres of good grass for it and set him up as landowner.

"And here," said Lord Hartington, "are two guineas to line the pockets with."

"Thank you, your Grace; thank your lordship. But the wild petticoat-man ud a bet me if't hadna bin for that good hard bit of oad Derbyshire; he has a yed like a knog of oak. He mun hae hafe stakes ony road."

William stepped up to his antagonist, who without any fuss on his comrades' part had regained consciousness and was already sitting up and stripping himself of the coat, which he conceded that he had forfeited.

William;

"Keep it, mon," said "thou'rt kindly welcome to't. I hae another for mysen, summat like a coat. And see! here's hafe stakes for thee." He put one of the guineas into the Highlander's palm. "Thou'st addled it fair if ivver mon did. I wish we'd hafe a gallond o' good ale here, so's we could drink friends handsomely. Good-bye, Johnny; an' if e'er we meet again-which I conna say I'm very fierce for-we'll hae another touch. Shake honds, mon."

The Highlander, now stoutly on his

"Ah, we all know which side the ladies of the Chance family patch themselves."

"Nay, your Grace," said Frank Chance impetuously, "man and woman alike, we wear our likings on our faces."

His Grace laughed again, the easy man that he was.

"And on your tongues most of all, Master Frank." He turned to the hunt. "But I fear, gentlemen, we shall be ill reported on if we let these men go without examination."

"We've letten 'em goo a'ready," said a blunt yeoman.

For during the colloquy the caterans, resuming their plunder, had been stealthily but quickly drawing aloof, and now they suddenly started off in open flight, heading straight for the steepest of Mam Tor, which was not more than a quarter of a mile off. "After them, gentlemen all."

Immediately all the field was at the gallop, all the footmen at the run, all but the duke, the dismounted groom who held his own horse and his master's, and the huntsman and whippersin attendant on the hounds. Soon these last heard a gun-shot, doubled by the echo. The leading horse ran stagger

ingly for another fifty yards, then fell with his rider.

"God bless us!" exclaimed the huntsman. "His lardship's down!"

"Haste, Castledine," said the duke. "Inquire how he does."

One of the whippers-in galloped off. "His lardship's on's feet again, your Grace," piped the huntsman. "But poor Donna isna. Mr. Bagshawe has putten his lardship up on his own hoss. But they'll noan head 'em now, your Grace; they're hafe up Mam Tor a'ready. I nivver seed two-legged men run like 'em. Damn me if they wouldna gie Promise and Performance a good run; but 'twouldna do to put hounds in to varmin. That ud clane unlarn 'em all the dishcrimination ivver they've larnt."

The Duke turned again to Mistress Ann and said:

"I ask now, madam, what ought to have been my first word, I ask now with my humble apology, what may I have the honor of doing for you?"

But before she had acknowledged the courtesy with more than a curtsy he missed Roland, who without a farewell, unless a farewell may be wrapped up in a thought, shown in a look, had stolen away in the direction opposed to that taken by the Highlanders, towards the rising ground above the Winnats.

"Where is that young gentleman with a white favor in his hat?"

"He's yonner, your Grace," said his groom.

The duke had just let the Highlanders slip, and timid by reaction was afraid of a jealous government's animadversion.

"Go and fetch him back to me, you and Bramwell," he said.

Said Mistress Ann, "I give your Grace my assurance of his inoffensiveness. He was simply a fellow-captive with myself of those savages."

"Accepting your assurance, madam,

I doubt not he has no need to shrink from giving an account of himself. After him, you two, quickly, and bid him return with you."

"Your Grace," said Mistress Ann, "I pinned that favor in his hat myself as a protection against the Highlanders. He is the son of a gentleman of your own politics and religion."

"Then I must give myself the opportunity to beg his pardon for a momentary suspicion."

Probably the duke already had misgivings concerning his lenity to the Highlanders, but it would have been too late for him to give other orders in Roland's favor had he been so disposed. The groom had mounted after handing the duke's jennet to William Drew, the other whipper-in had beaten bitch Merry and dog Supple from under his horse's feet, and both were already out of call. Roland as soon as he saw that pursuit was intended set off at full speed, but he had gone hardly a furlong before he was fain to double to his left in order to avoid being run down. That brought him to the edge of the Winnats, the defile through which the road wound, and being desperate and young he made no more ado but dashed straight down the breakneck incline, a grassy slide let into a limestone precipice some two hundred feet high. The horsemen reined in at the top.

"Stop, thou fool, stop!" bawled the groom.

"And save thy neck dacently for t' hangman," shouted the whipper-in.

But Roland was in no condition to listen to advice however persuasive. He lost his footing immediately, the best thing that could happen to him. Thrown on his back he slid down at a fearful speed, feet first fortunately. He expected nothing better than an instant death. His back was on fire. But half-way down, just when he was beginning to swing round to head-first,

his course was somewhat checked. The slope took a gentler and yet gentler pitch, was covered with a thicker herbage. Now sliding, now rolling, he descended at an ever slackening velocity until he dropped into a deep trench and was stopped, safe but sorely bruised and his back half flayed. He lay still.

Said the whipper-in to the groom, “A brucken neck on his shou'ders, Bob, isna worth a wh-ole un on mine. Το

say noat o' t' hoss's, which is worth

more nor ayther."

"To his Grace?"

"Him I were meaning."

They rode back to the mouth of the pass. The pain kept Roland alive to his danger. He descended stiffly to the road and limped away down-hill. In the defile there was an upward cur rent of air by which the variable mist was blown along in rags, and the attack of day was still kept off by its rock barriers. Soon he heard behind him the clatter of horses' hoofs rapidly approaching. He drew aside, and keeping close to the left-hand cliff hurried on as fast as he could hobble, looking desperately for a way of escape, if only a hole in which to enniche himself. Suddenly the clatter of the hoofs ceased, and there was the sound of men's voices in loud colloquy. Probably his pursuers had stopped at the place of his descent and were looking for the corpse.

"I tell thee," said one, whom Roland

laid to be the groom, "he's stuck fast hafe-way down t' cliff."

"An' I tell thee," said the other, "as thou'lt blether next of a mon sticking fast hafe-way down Hathersage steeple."

"There's ne'er a crumb on him at bottom."

"He wasna meant to die so, nor yit to be drownded."

The horses were again in motion but less hurriedly, as though their riders were searching as they went.

"There's some hidy-holes in t' rock somewheer hereabouts," said the groom. "Thinkst he'd creep into one on 'em?"

"Go look!" answered the whipper-in contemptuously; "he's a furriner, he knows noat o' t' country; he'll foller his nose; if he's up to follering oat."

At that very moment Roland, who at forty yards' distance was a shadow among shadows, a shred of mist among other shreds, saw a narrow opening, a mere nick in the face of the rock. He bowed his head and slipped in; it was the entrance to a dark little cave. The horsemen rode by. He sank to the slimy ground exhausted. For a while he knew nothing but pain, was in a despoiled sort of consciousness even of that, being unable to fix how he came by it or in what part he suffered it. It was indeed a painful numbness to pain rather than the true feeling of it.

ancient while really it is quite new-a thing of the present generation. In the dawn and in the noontide of geographical discovery the Poles were not regarded as objects of attainment in themselves. The early Arctic navigators were concerned in finding a short route to the Indies. Even a few years ago it was the fashion for Arctic ex

plorers to deny that they had any ambition to reach the Pole; and they usually sought funds and the patronage of learned societies on the plea that they desired only to carry on scientific researches in the polar area. Nevertheless, everyone who could read between the lines has known that every Arctic explorer in the last twenty-five years has secretly, it not openly, cherished the hope, though he may have repudiated the intention, of being the first to reach latitude 90° N.

Admiral R. E. Peary worked at the problem of travelling to the Pole for more than twenty years, each successive journey teaching him something more or carrying him somewhat farther.

The honesty of his efforts and their success were vouched for by the leading geographical societies of the world, which had awarded him their highest honors. His ultimate success in reaching the Pole in 1909 was the natural, and almost the inevitable, result of the earlier experience, and his known powers and character caused his reports to be accepted without question. The special medals awarded him for the feat, however, were not given without a careful examination of the records on which he relied, and a searching investigation into his method of taking observations. The fact that he reached the immediate vicinity of the Pole has been conceded by all competent authorities, though by some it was conceded reluctantly enough, for Peary's relations with other Arctic travellers had not always been smooth and had made him some enemies, while the language of his books and magazine articles was much too grandiloquent and emotional to approve itself to the "expurgate and sober" British taste in geographical literature. Peary's last and, to his mind, crowning journey was of little scientific value compared with his earlier work, just as Amundsen's penetration to the South Pole was less

valuable to geography than his threading of the North West Passage. Yet in our hearts we allow that it is good that human beings have at last penetrated to the Poles, for it was humiliating to the self-respect of the race that any portion of our little planet should be inaccessible to its inhabitants.

When Admiral Peary's friends and the geographical world were waiting for news of his emergence from the Arctic regions in the autumn of 1909 with every expectation of hearing that he had this time fulfilled his ambition, a telegram from Lerwick, dated September 1, announced that Dr. F. A. Cook had reached the North Pole and was coming on from Greenland to Copenhagen. Dr. Cook was known as having accompanied Peary to the Arctic regions some years before, and as having acted as surgeon to the Belgian Antarctic expedition in 1897, on which he wrote an admirable book. He had also claimed the first ascent of Mt. McKinley in Alaska in 1906, though this claim was not accepted by the leading mountaineers. It was known that he had gone north in 1907 and had remained there; but the report of his reaching the Pole was a great surprise. A fuller telegram two days later gave most detailed descriptions of the explorer's feelings of loneliness, hunger and triumph, repeated the much too precise statements of latitude and the incredible temperature of -83° C., and gave the date of reaching the Pole as April 21, 1908, and that of leaving it as April 23. His only companions were two young Eskimo. On returning they reached land far to the west of their starting-point, spent a winter at Cape Sparbo on Jones Sound, returned northward to their original base in the spring of 1909, met an American sportsman, Mr. Whitney, there, and "moved northward" (a slip for southward) to Upernivik and so caught the Danish steamer for Europe. The long mes