“Ay, that is the misery of it,” said his host. “Honest and honourable falling among thieves!” Some similar thought to this it had been, perhaps, which suggested to Lord Kemms the idea of calling at Berrie Down. Some vague fancy of saving Arthur—of rescuing him from the Philistines! But when once he found himself seated in Squire Dudley’s drawing-room, he felt how futile was any such hope, how utterly vain it would be for him to proffer advice, or counsel caution to his neighbour. Already the poison had begun to work; already he had dreamed his dreams, and beheld his visions; already he had made his thousands, and spent them in imagination; already the glory of the future flung a brightness across his path, and made him look on life more cheerfully, on his fellow-men more kindly. Let success bring what it would, it could not bring more than Arthur already saw advancing towards him. Prophetically, out of the great City he beheld riches, and honours, and glories, travelling northward to Berrie Down. The dust of the approaching caravan was clear to his mental vision as the turf stretching down to the Hollow. If for a moment he was taken aback, it was when Lord Kemms told Mr. Black, in his presence, he had decided to decline his obliging offer. But Mr. Black so coolly pooh-poohed what he called his lordship’s hasty rejection,—so resolutely refused to take “no” for an answer,—so determinedly, and yet pleasantly, said they “could talk the matter over at some future time, there was no hurry about it,”—so utterly ignored the fact of Lord Kemms having assured him his mind was made up, he would have nothing whatever to do with the company,—that Arthur was reassured, and believed Mr. Black, when that gentleman subsequently informed him Lord Kemms had only been a little set against the affair by “that meddling upstart, Raidsford.” “He’ll be all right enough by the time we want him,” finished the promoter, confidently; while his lordship was walking down the drive, feeling he had made nothing by his move, rather, on the contrary, given the advantage to a much cleverer and more ready man than himself. “Hang the fellow!” he thought, “and his confounded self-sufficiency. Ah! my little friend,” he added out loud, as Lally parted the boughs of an evergreen oak, and looked out at him from among the greenery, “won’t you come and speak to me; won’t you tell me how you have been this long time?” Not from any shyness, but from precisely the same feeling as that which makes a kitten bound off when a hand is stretched out coaxingly towards it, Lally allowed the branches to spring back and the foliage hide her. “Don’t be rude, Lally; go and speak to Lord Kemms when he asks you,” said a voice from behind the shrubs, while two very white hands parted the branches above Lally’s head, while a very pretty face, half concealed by leaves, met the nobleman’s delighted eyes. In a moment a sweet jingle of verse seemed ringing through the air.