'Only this, dad. The black keeper--Tim, you know--weighs two hundred and twenty pounds. The other day he was stronger than I. I threw him last eve--Cumberland. This morning I lifted him with my left and landed him on the west side of the picket-fence. How's that for a fling, daddy?' 'Go on, you young rogue. Listen, I hear Aggie calling you!' 'Oh, but you listen to me, father. I really don't see enough life down here.' 'Well, there's London, my lad. London for life!' 'No, no! For the next few months, with your permission, I'm going to live a life as free as a swallow's. I'm going on the road in my own house-upon-wheels. I'll see and mingle with all sorts of society, high and low, rich and poor. I'll be happy in spirit, healthy in body, and by the time I come back my mind will be quite a storehouse of knowledge that will better fit me for Parliament than all the lore in this great library, father.' 'You're going to take up with gipsies, Frank?' 'Be a sort of gip myself, daddy.' 'Bother me, boy, if there isn't something really good in the idea. But how are you going to set about it? Build a caravan for yourself?' 'Not build one, father. Nat Biffins Lee--a scion of the old, old gipsy Lee, you know--owns a real white elephant'---- 'Bless my soul! is the lad going mad? You don't mean seriously to travel the country with a real white elephant, eh?' 'You don't understand, daddy. This Nat Lee has a splendid house-upon-wheels which belonged to the Duchess of X---- She went abroad, and Lee has bought it. But as it needs three powerful horses to rattle it along, it is quite a white elephant to Nat. So I'm going up north to Loggiemouth in Nairnshire, and if I like it I'll buy it. Is it all right?' 'Right as rain in March, boy. Go when you like.' 'Coming, Aggie; coming.' * * * * * Deprived of its detail, this is pretty much the story that Antony Blake told Lotty Lee that autumn night as they sat together eating chocolates on the big white stone on Whinny Moor. And that is how Antony happened to be there. CHAPTER III. IN GIPSY CAMP AND CARAVAN. Brighter and brighter shone the moon, yet it was dark in that great wood, into which the light could hardly penetrate. Solemn as a cathedral, too, with far above them the black roof of interlacing pine-trees. Only here and there the chequered moonlight streamed downwards on the soft carpet of needled foliage that lay beneath. Pathway it could scarce have been called, save for the blazed trees, for the boy Chops had done his work well, albeit he had wasted the properties. There were places where the gloom was so complete that Frank Antony had to feel for Lotty to make sure she was still by his side. And neither seemed inclined to break the stillness just then.