‘Young ladies in society don’t generally bite the corners of their pinafores.’ ‘Charley does, and—— No; that’s nonsense. Young ladies in society don’t wear pinafores, so of course they have none to bite.’ At this moment, Captain Bowood entered the room, followed by a foreign-looking young man, who was dressed in a shabby frock-coat buttoned close up to the throat, and a pair of shoes very much down at heel. In one hand he carried a hat that was considerably the worse for wear. His long hair, parted down the middle, fell over his coat collar, and he wore blue spectacles. ‘There you are, young man,’ said the Captain as he pointed to the piano. ‘And the sooner you are done and off the premises, the better.’ ‘Very good, sare. Much oblige,’ answered the stranger. At the sound of his voice, Miss Brandon started and gazed earnestly at the young man in the blue spectacles. ‘Good gracious! Why, it must _be_—it _is_ Charley!’ she muttered under her breath. ‘My poor dear boy! But what a fright he has made of himself!’ A KING OF ACRES. III.—A RINGFENCE: CONCLUSION. There were great elms in the Out-park, whose limbs or boughs, as large as the trunk itself, came down almost to the ground. They touched the tops of the white wild parsley; and when sheep were lying beneath, the jackdaws stepped from the sheep’s back to the bough and returned again. The jackdaws had their nests in the hollow places of these elms; for the elm as it ages becomes full of cavities. These great trees often divided into two main boughs, rising side by side, and afar off visible as two dark streaks among the green. For many years no cattle had been permitted in the park, and the boughs of the trees had grown in a drooping form, as they naturally do unless eaten, or broken by animals pushing against them. But since the times of agricultural pressure, a large part of the domain had been fenced off, and was now partly grazed and partly mown, being called the Out-park. There were copses at the farther side, where in spring the May flowered, the purple orchis was drawn up high by the trees and bushes—twice as high as its fellows in the mead, where a stray spindle-tree grew; and from these copses the cuckoos flew round the park.