"Don't know any," was the solemn reply. Jane pursed up her mouth and opened her eyes wider. She was standing upright as a lath before him, her hands clasped behind her, and the water still glistened on her slim bare legs. "Where do you live?" she inquired, compassionately. The stranger jerked his head back across the moor to where the ground rose and the façade of a distant mansion was discernible through a vista in the trees of a great park. "Over there," he added in amplification. "Does that house belong to you?" asked Jane all incredulous. She had decided at the first glimpse that this was a homeless tramp of the cleaner and rather nice variety, and from the first had been prepared to take him, metaphorically, to her bosom. "No," said the tramp. "It's my brother-in-law's place. I stay with him and my step-sister when I'm ashore." He eyed the children in turn. "Where do you live?" "We live ever so far away," replied Cornelius James. "But we've all had chicken-pox and we've come with Miss Mayne to stay in a farm near here. Glebe Farm it's called. Mummie's up in Scotland----" "So's to be near Daddy's ship," explained Jane. "Will you come and have tea with us one day?" added the boy. "You needn't be frightened, 'cos we've stopped peeling and we're out of quarantine. Do you know where Glebe Farm is?" The other nodded. "Belongs to my brother-in-law," he said. His eyes as he spoke were on the lower reaches of the river. Then abruptly he rose to his feet. "Now I must be off," he said. "Awfully important engagement." At the bend of the river Miss Mayne and Georgina stood shading their eyes from the sun. "Oh, don't go!" chorused Jane and her brother. "You haven't talked to Miss Mayne yet," added Cornelius James--"or Georgina. She'll run after you when she knows you're in the Navy, so it's no use going yet----Hallo!" He broke off and stared downstream. "Now where's Miss Mayne off to?" "Gone to put her stockings on," explained Jane, with the mysterious comprehension of sex. "She's shy." "Pouf!" snorted Cornelius James. "Miss Mayne shy!" "Must be off," muttered Mr. Jakes with a swift glance at the far-off clump of gorse that concealed Miss Mayne and her modesty. "Just remembered most important engagement----" He extended his hand to each of his small acquaintances, and, turning abruptly, made off across the moor with his shadow stalking jerkily ahead of him. "Nice man!" was Jane's emphatic conviction. Cornelius James eyed his sister with suspicion. "Now look here, Jane," he said, "_I_ found this man. Just remember that. You bagged the shepherd in the little house on wheels, an' that boy who could imitate a bullfinch, and the man with the wooden leg at the level crossing. I found them first and I found this man first. He's mine." "Here's Miss Mayne," replied his sister. 2