"DEAR ELSIE: Our interview of last night was very unsatisfactory, and I want to see you again, and I hope we will come to some lasting agreement. I am quite willing to come down handsomely for any supposed wrong I may have done you, and I hope you will act like a sensible girl and accept my proposition. Will you meet me to-night at nine o'clock, on the ridge above Fern Dene? It's a quiet place, and we can have our talk out there without being interrupted as we were last night. There is always someone about near your house, seemingly. But do act sensibly, and don't make a row about what can not be helped now. "Yours sincerely, "T. H." He finished this letter, and then put it in his pocket and walked to the stables, and gave it to his groom. This man was engaged rubbing down a horse when his master appeared, and he seemed quite accustomed to receive such missions. "Take that over to Miss Wray, Jack," said young Henderson; "make some excuse--have a pot of beer or something--but give it into her own hands, and no one else's, and here's a shilling for the beer." "Very well, master," answered Jack, pocketing the note and the shilling with something between a grin and a nod, and then touching his forelock. "Must I go directly?" "Yes," said Henderson, and then he turned away, and went whistling out of the stables with his hands in his pockets. Upon which Jack took a rough towel and rubbed his own face and hands, and otherwise improved his appearance, and then started off on his way to the wayside public house. "The game's nearly up," he thought, with another grin, as he went shambling on. "Miss Elsie will ha' to look a bit lower than the young master before she's done." He speedily arrived at his destination. It was a pretty spot--this wayside house, with its trellised walls, covered with creepers and roses, and its open porch. In the porch the master of the house, James Wray, was sitting smoking a long white pipe, and he took it from his mouth and nodded in a friendly manner when the groom from Stourton Grange appeared. "Well, Jack, my lad," he said, "and how are ye all at the Grange?" James Wray was not unaware of the intimacy of his daughter with the young owner of the Grange, or without his private hopes that some day he might see Elsie the mistress there. He therefore made room for Jack, the groom, to take a seat beside him in the porch, but this did not suit Jack's views. "No, master," he said, "I'm that dry I must ha' a drop o' beer first, and I'll go in and get it, and then come out and ha' a bit crack." The landlord nodded his head and resumed his pipe, and Jack entered the house. Two or three men were sitting drinking, and a good-looking smart girl was acting as barmaid, but Elsie Wray was not visible. Jack looked around, called for his beer, but had a word to whisper in the barmaid's ears as she was serving it.