Miles entered, red of face and somewhat short of breath; but nothing could surpass his dignity. He lifted the dish from the ground, and renewing the plates with miraculous speed, handed it round with the utmost composure, to all outward seeming. The meal over, Miles sought an interview with his mistress, apologising for any laxity of order that she might have noticed, assuring her that the like should not occur again; and that Mrs. Doidge had discharged the girl for her remissness. Helen had much ado to get the sentence of dismissal commuted to a month’s trial. *CHAPTER I* On a bright day in late June, Hazel, now a tall slip of a girl of sixteen, was wandering through the bit of woodland that stretched from the immediate vicinage of Hazelhurst on its right flank to the boundary of the land that had been left to the Le Mesuriers when, seven years since, the greater part of the estate had been sold. Tempting offers had been tendered, both for the ground as it stood, and for the timber grown upon it; but Mrs. Le Mesurier had remained firm, and her sons had resolved that no poverty should induce them to part with this last remaining portion of their heritage. As to Hazel, the woodland was her kingdom, her empire. She loved every inch of its leafy, winding tracks; she was acquainted with every squirrel and bird housed within its hospitable shelter; she gloried in each veteran oak and cherished each tender sapling. To-day, as she sauntered on, her small brown hands clasped before her, pensive, her head bent, the soft brown hair falling like a mantle around her, she seemed a very wood-nymph in her simple gown—the exact shade of the gnarled trunks, in which russet tint it was her mother’s fancy to clothe the girl. Presently, wearied of pursuing the beaten pathways she turned aside to stroll over a thick, springy carpet of last year’s crumpled leaves, strewn with fir cones, pine needles, acorns, and acorn cups. A squirrel ran by her, paused and looked back, with what seemed to the girl a roguish twinkling of his bright eyes; then, with a salute of his bushy tail, was gone. Birds of sorts, ceaselessly trilling their sweet notes, hopped to the lower branches as she passed; presently one or two, leaving the piping chorus for a space, fluttered to the ground near her feet and, as she paused, seemed to be considering her in a conclusive, bright-eyed way, with heads first on this side, then on that, as if questioning the cause of her muteness.