Oliver Boringdon--dark, upright, steady-eyed--had still something of the Londoner and of the Government official about his appearance. His dark, close-cropped hair was covered by a neat cap which matched his serge coat and knickerbockers. His companion, James Berwick, looked--as indeed he was--far more a citizen of the world. He was bare-headed, his fair hair ruffled and lifted from his lined forehead by the wind; his shooting clothes, of rough tweed and ugly yellow check colouring, were more or less out of shape. He was smoking a huge pipe, and as he walked along, with rather ungainly steps--the gait of a man more at home in the saddle than on foot--he swung an oak stick this way and that, now and again throwing it in the air and catching it again--a trick which sorely tried the patience of his staider companion. When they reached the nearest point to Doctor McKirdy and Mrs. Rebell, the one took off his cap and the other waved his stick vigorously by way of greeting. Indeed Berwick, as Doctor McKirdy very well saw, would have soon lessened the ten yards space between the two groups, but Boringdon, looking before him rather more straightly than before, was already walking on. "Well," said the doctor, "you have now had your wish, Ma'am: that was Mr. Oliver Boringdon, and the other is his fidus Achates, Mr. James Berwick: _he's_ a conceited loon if you like. But then he's more reason to be so! Now what d'ye think they reminded me of as they walked along there?" "I don't know," faltered Barbara. She was still feeling as if a sudden blast of wind had beaten across her face--such had been the effect of the piercing, measuring glance of the man whom she took to be Oliver Boringdon. No doubt the over-bold look was excused by the fact that he recognised in her his sister's friend. Barbara flushed deeply; she was wondering, with acute discomfort, what account of her, and of her affairs, Grace Johnstone--impetuous, indiscreet Grace--had written to her mother and brother? Oh! surely she could be trusted to have kept secret certain things she knew--things which had been discovered by the Johnstones, and admitted by Barbara in her first moments of agonised relief from Pedro Rebell's half-crazy ill-usage. "Well, I'll tell you what the sight of the two of them suggested to me," went on Doctor McKirdy, "and in fact what they exactly appeared like, just now,----" he hesitated a moment, and then with manifest enjoyment added, "The policeman and the poacher! That's what any stranger might well ha' taken them for, eh?" But Barbara had given no heed to the bold gazer's more drab companion. CHAPTER III. "Mates are chosen marketwise Coolest bargainer best buys, Leap not, nor let leap the heart; Trot your track and drag your cart, So your end may be in wool Honoured and with manger full." GEORGE MEREDITH.