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you haven't happened to notice such a thing as a Gladstone bag anywhere?" Martin, who had only been waiting to be spoken to that he might rest from the not over-congenial labor suggested by Mrs. Lauriston for his spare moments, found this an excellent excuse for straightening his back, and he looked at his master with as much astonishment as is permitted to a retainer who has had the advantage of seeing service in Ealing. "Gladstone bag, sir? No, I can't say as I have. Have you any idea at all whereabouts you dropped it, sir?"

The habits inculcated by such a training as Martin had had soon reasserted their sway, and only in the repetition of the two words did his surprise affect his speech. The rest of his utterances betrayed no more than polite interest tempered by zeal.

Mr. Lauriston, however, was not unaware that he had nearly shaken the completeness of Martin's confidence. "Oh, it is not mine," he hastened to add; "it belongs to a friend of mine. If you should happen to come across it, you might let me know. It will be somewhere on the other side of the river."

"Very good, sir," said Martin with an impassivity that in the circumstances was highly creditable. It is doubtful if Mr. Lauriston's explanatory effort was much less surprising than his original question.

"By the way, there will be no occasion to mention such a thing to your mistress," added Mr. Lauriston, not

that he doubted, but to disarm the pos sibility of doubt.

"Very good, sir," said Martin again. "And, Martin," his master continued, "I want you to put me across the river in the boat. Some of the ladies may wish to use it this morning, so I had better not keep it there. I am going to take a walk. You can fetch me back about one o'clock." So saying Mr. Lauriston threw away the stump of his cigar, and they both moved towards the little creek in which the boat was moored.

Martin landed his master on the other bank and returned shaking his head slowly and solemnly from side to side. "There don't look nothing amiss with him," he thought.

He

Mr. Lauriston now safely on the other bank turned his steps down stream, not observing a figure which disappeared behind a haystack in the furthest corner of the meadow. soon came to the belt of wood already mentioned, and entering it turned to the left along a narrow path which led to a small clearing. Here he paused, sat down on an old stump, lighted a fresh cigar and waited. Presently there was a crackling of the undergrowth and Charles appeared carrying two bottles of beer and two glasses, which he placed on another stump as he greeted Mr. Lauriston.

"You haven't found it yet, I sup pose?" said the first comer.

Charles shook his head. "I pretty well finished this part of the wood yesterday, too," he said. "It's awfully good of you to come and help.”

Mr. Lauriston modestly disclaimed any special merit. "The fact is," he explained, "it gives me something to do, and I like looking for things, always did from my childhood. I delighted in scouting when I was a volunteer."

"I'm much obliged to you all the same," said Charles, "I've covered

twice the amount of ground since I've had you to help."

"Not at all," said Mr. Lauriston with the contradictory politeness so dear to the Briton. "I declare yesterday gave

me quite an appetite. Now, where are we going to begin?"

"Well," said Charles reconnoitring the ground with his eye, "I don't think it's anywhere close at hand. I vote we leave this part and go right into the wood. You bear away to the left and I'll go to the right; then we shan't run the risk of covering the same ground twice. We'll come back here for a drink about twelve if that suits you."

This suggestion did suit Mr. Lauriston, and he was about to begin his task when a thought occurred to him. "By the way," he said, "I'm not so young as I was,"-Charles politely denied this -"and there is the chance of its being up a tree; I can't climb trees as I could."

A certain license of reminiscent speech is permitted to gentlemen who are no longer young, and it is hardly worth mentioning that Mr. Lauriston had never been able to climb trees. That he could not do so now, however, was a point that Charles had to take into consideration. After a moment's reflection he answered: "These trees are not big enough to hide it, if it is anywhere in the branches; it's a good big bag; so you're certain to see it. Shout for me and I'll come and climb for it."

Mr. Lauriston promised to do so and they separated, each turning to his allotted portion of wood.

Of the search little need be said. Looking for a Gladstone bag in a wood is not unlike looking for a tennis-ball in a shrubbery, an occupation in which Mr. Lauriston, from frequent practice at Ealing, had become tolerably expert. There was a shrubbery at each end of the tennis-lawn and the netting was

hardly adequate to cope with the variety of Cicely's strokes; she was accustomed to leave all that could be left to her partner, but now and then there comes a ball that cannot be avoided without great exertion; this ball it was her custom to remove as far from herself as she could, frequently employing the device by which the missile is received on the racket and transferred to some indefinite point behind one's right shoulder. Mr. Lauriston was, as a rule, his niece's partner by virtue of the social law which ordains that when of any given four three are women it shall be the masculine prerogative to be considered the best player and accordingly to pair off with the worst. So it came about that Mr. Lauriston spent much time in the shrubberies while Cicely made suggestions and calculations on the other side of the netting.

Cicely had a theory that when a ball was thoroughly lost you could effect much by throwing a second ball after it at a venture, the idea being of course that one ball found the other; but the effect, as her exasperated uncle had been known to declare, sometimes was that, though the one ball doubtless found the other, he himself lost both. It may have been the likeness of occupation that brought Cicely's theory to his mind after an hour of stooping, craning, poking into the undergrowth with his stick, and generally arduous searching. As he paused awhile to rest he could not help wondering whether there might not be something in it, and whether if he sent Martin to hide his own Gladstone bag in the wood the result might not be satisfactory.

In order to think the matter over he made his way to a gate which opened out of the wood into a meadow, for he had followed Charles's instructions as to keeping well to the left. Leaning on this gate he lighted another cigar

(an excess of his morning allowance amply justified by the honest toil which made him mop his brow) and meditated dreamily. And as he meditated objections to the scheme began to rise up before him. For one thing, Martin might hide the bag somewhere where he would never think of looking, -in that haystack opposite for instance. No one ever puts Gladstone bags in haystacks; no one ever looks for them there. And then Martin might forget where he had put it, and so there would be two Gladstone bags like Cicely's tennis-balls-hopelessly lost. No, the idea was not feasible. And with this Mr. Lauriston shook himself into wakefulness once more. and remembering that Charles had talked of refreshment at about this hour, he went back to the rendezvous.

After they had rested and refreshed themselves there still remained a good half-hour of valuable time, which Charles suggested might be utilized for exploring a meadow or two. It would be a change, he said, from the confinement of the wood. Mr. Lauriston assented and they forthwith entered the meadow in the corner of which was the haystack with which the reader is now familiar. It caught Charles's practised eye at once. "Did you come .on that by any chance?" he said. "You must have got pretty near it."

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Lauriston, "it isn't there." And indeed he was under the impression that he had settled the point practically as well as logically, so curiously are the workings of an active mind and a tired body interwoven. Charles had complete confidence in Mr. Lauriston and he dismissed the haystack from his thoughts, turning to the river bank, which was thickly fringed with tall reeds. Here an uuscrupulous person who did not mind exposing another person's property to the risk of damp might have concealed many Gladstone bags.

Meanwhile in the next meadow, two people were engaged in argument. "But it's much too big," objected Cicely. "They won't believe I ever caught it all by myself." It was a large chub which Talbot, not without an uncomfortable remembrance of Izaak Walton's disinterested generosity to the milkmaid, was pressing upon Cicely's acceptance. The perch had not been on the feed, a fact which Cicely in feminine wise had been inclined to attribute to lack of skill on the part of her angler. When indeed an hour had passed by without a bite she had remarked that it was a pity that she had not brought her own rod, as she would not like to go back without anything. And then,-for they were now on sufficiently intimate teams for her to tease him-she had hinted that the fisherman was too smartly attired; his hat, she thought, had frightened the perch away.

Talbot was rather annoyed; he considered Cicely ungrateful, but there were several reasons why he could not say so. Instead he was inflicting upon her a long dissertation on the unstable nature of fishes, and was about to assure her somewhat warmly that even the best angler could not always suc ceed, when he had an unexpected bite and succeeded in landing the chub in question, a fish of some three pounds. Thereupon he altered the form of his peroration and pointed out that patience, not uncombined with skill, was bound to achieve result in the end. Cicely was convinced: there was no doubt as to the result and her opinion of Talbot went up; but she hesitated as to the propriety of accepting the fish. In the first place she felt that she would never be able to remember its Latin name, which was far more complicated than that of the perch: in the second she did not think so highly of its attributes, history, and habits.

which she made Talbot recount to her; and lastly it was too big.

"Can't you catch me a little one?" she said.

Talbot had no doubt as to his ability to do so, but success had made him masterful and he insisted on her accepting the chub. "Say you just pulled it out," he advised; "they won't know any better."

Cicely admitted that they might not discover any technical inaccuracy in such a description, but was not sure as to the attitude of her own conscience in the matter. At the word conscience, however, Talbot smiled a

peculiar

smile at his well-polished brown boots and Cicely decided not to insist on that point; instead she blushed and repeated her request for a little one. At that moment Talbot, who was leaning against a willow close to her in a studiously graceful attitude, suddenly looked up with an exclamation and then, whipping off his too conspicuous hat, sat down very quickly behind the tree. Cicely raised herself a little to see what was the chatter, and perceived at the other end of the field two persons getting over the stile. "It's Uncle Henry," she exclaimed, "and a young man." They looked at each other in consternation.

"You must go and meet them," said Cicely after swift deliberation, "and say I'm not here if they are looking for me."

Talbot frowned at his brown boots again to collect his thoughts. He did not want to see Charles at this moment any more than Cicely desired to meet her uncle. Then he looked round hurriedly. Positively there was no cover in the field except this particular clump of willows. There was one course, however, if the worst came to the worst. "They're not coming this way yet," he said more cheerfully as he peered round the tree and saw the pair stopping and apparently poking

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"Haddon, the other man, would," Talbot asserted. "You don't know him; he's a most determined fellow. sides they evidently don't suspect anything yet. They're only looking for mushrooms." Talbot counted on Cicely's ignorance of the locality in which mushrooms may be found.

"I like mushrooms," she confessed. "But do they grow among turnips?" she asked with vague doubts. "I thought they grew in frames like melons."

"Oh, they'll grow anywhere," said Talbot reassuringly.

But this did not altogether satisfy her. "Then they may be growing all round us," she said, looking about her in alarm, "and they will be sure to look here too."

"Well, it won't matter if they only find you here alone, will it?" said Talbot, whose resolution was taken. "They mustn't see me, of course."

"No, that wouldn't matter," she admitted. "Uncle Henry would be more frightened than I should; in fact I shouldn't be frightened at all. what will you do?"

But

Talbot pointed to the river. "I will get in and swim down to those reeds. No one could see me in the middle of them."

Cicely looked at him for one instant in a way which would have amply recompensed him even if he had done.

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decision, "you would be drowned or catch your death of cold, and spoil all your clothes too." This argument, it is to be feared, did not weigh very much with Talbot. But Cicely's pretty "you mustn't really," was conclusive. "We'll wait here and hope they don't come. If they do, I'm not afraid of Uncle Henry," she added, from knowledge that he was after all a partner in guilt. "And besides he eats nearly all the fish himself."

And so they waited, and Talbot in the intervals of keeping an eye on the other pair proceeded to make the best use of the opportunities opened out to him by Cicely's brief but self-revealing glance. "No, I shouldn't like you to be drowned," she confessed, and Talbot determined to remain and brave all storms, even the storm of the enraged Charles.

Fortunately, however, the stormclouds passed away, or rather got over the stile again after having apparently exhausted the mushroom-bearing possibilities of the hedge. And when Cicely at last declared that she must go and meekly promised to take the chub with her, Talbot congratulated himself on a well-spent morning. There is nothing that helps the intimacy of two people so much as the discovery that they can both be brave in the face of a common danger.

CHAPTER XVIII.

"Henry," said Mrs. Lauriston, "I should like to have a word with you." "Certainly, my dear," Mr. Lauriston answered without enthusiasm. He had hoped to escape as usual for his cigar after lunch, but as that was not to be he resettled himself resignedly, wondering what had cast such a gloom over the meal. The three girls had also been sensible of Mrs. Lauriston's silent displeasure, and had exchanged

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rose first, rather elaborately at her ease; but her rising first was proof of her not feeling so. Agatha sat still for a similar reason.

"Where are you going, Cicely?" asked Mrs. Lauriston.

"I am going to get a book; Doris said she would take me for a row," said Cicely.

"We shall be punctual with tea," announced her aunt with purpose. Cicely nodded and took Doris away with her. "See that Martin washes up properly," said Mrs. Lauriston to Agatha, and then she led her husband away from the camp until they were out of sight and earshot.

Mr. Lauriston, oppressed with misgivings, selected a cigar with deliberate nonchalance and felt for his match-box. As an ex-volunteer the smell of smoke should fortify him for the encounter. Remembering that the last word belongs to the fair sex by right of conquest, he thought to secure the first. All was undoubtedly discovered, but even so a certain advantage rests with the offensive. He struck a match therefore, and murmured that he had found him looking for a Gladstone bag.

"Henry," said Mrs. Lauriston very firmly indeed, "we must go back to Ealing at once." She paid no attention to her husband's opening murmur. The match dropped without fulfilling its purpose, and, justly irritated, tried to burn a hole in Mr. Lauriston's white canvas shoe.

"My dear," he remonstrated, "what possible harm—”

"Mr. Lauriston," interjected his wife with increased severity, "if you have no proper feeling, I owe a duty to my poor sister. Mr. Neave may have been of good family,-the impertinence of his people to say poor Harriet was beneath him, and we daughters of an alderman who might have been Lord Mayor if he had lived, and a knight;

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