‘You must be sure and come. Tell Larry I insist upon it. We shall all be there, you know, and I shall look out for you, Lizzie, and if I don’t see you I shall send some one round to your cottage to fetch you.’ Lizzie Locke smiled and curtsied. ‘I’ll be sure and tell Larry of your goodness, miss’ she said, ‘and he’ll be able to thank you better than I can. Here comes a gentleman,’ she added, as she withdrew herself modestly from the side of the young lady’s horse. The gentleman, whom Lizzie Locke could have distinguished only as such from the different sound produced by his boots in walking, was Lord Worcester’s head gamekeeper, Frederick Darley. He was a young fellow to hold the responsible position he did, being only about thirty years of age, and he had not held it long; but he was the son of the gamekeeper on one of Lord Worcester’s estates in the south of England, and his lordship had brought him to Rooklands as soon as ever a vacancy occurred. He was a favourite with his master and his master’s guests, being a man of rather superior breeding and education, but on that very account he was much disliked by all the poor people around. Gamekeepers are not usually popular in a poaching district, but it was not Frederick Darley’s position alone that made him a subject for criticism. His crying sin, to use their own term, was that he ‘held his head too high.’ The velveteen coat he usually wore, with a rose in the button-hole, his curly black hair and waxed moustache, no less than the cigars he smoked and the air with which he affected the society of the gentry, showed the tenants of Rooklands that he considered himself vastly above themselves in position, and they hated him accordingly. The animus had spread to Corston, but Mr Darley was not well enough known there yet to have become a subject for general comment. Lizzie Locke had never even encountered him before. He was walking from the village on the present occasion swinging a light cane in his hand, and as Rosa Murray looked up at the blind girl’s exclamation, she perceived him close to her horse’s head. ‘Good morning, Miss Murray,’ he said, lifting his hat. ‘Good morning,’ she replied, without mentioning any name, but Lizzie Locke could detect from the slight tremor in her voice that she was confused at the sudden encounter. ‘Were you going down to the beach?’ ‘I was going nowhere but in search of you.’ ‘Shall we walk towards home then?’ said Rosa, suiting the action to the word. She evidently did not wish the blind girl to be a party to their conversation. She called out ‘Good-bye, Lizzie,’ once more as she walked her horse away, but before she was out of hearing, the little cockle-gatherer could distinguish her say to the stranger in a fluttered voice,— ‘I am so glad you are coming over to our harvest-home to-night.’