While this independent animal was being looked up, George passed his time in shooting snipe, sunning himself in Miss Redmond’s smiles, and thinning her mother’s rabbits. One day, as he was tramping through the wet woods, accompanied by “lodge” Pat, laden with dead bunnies, he noticed through a glade, what looked like a black figure--the figure of a woman. As any figure was an unusual sight in the upper plantations, he halted, stared, and finally advanced towards her--a girl in an old waterproof and black felt hat, with masses of loose brown hair, kneeling on the damp moss, and occasionally laying her head on the ground! “An escaped lunatic!” Also two very anxious fox terriers sniffing and yelping and running circles round her. “It’s Miss Betty,” ejaculated Pat, and the sound of his voice made her spring to her feet, and confront them. It was Miss Betty, the bath-chair girl; and how plain she was! Her hair was tumbling over her shoulders; her face was deadly white; her eyes dim and watery with crying; her nose the colour of a ripe tomato; an unbecoming old hat; a raw November day--of a truth, Betty Redmond had never looked worse! “Can I be of any assistance? Is anything the matter?” enquired George politely, as he doffed his deerstalker. “Yes, of course there is!” she gasped out hysterically. “It’s _Jones_! He has been in a rabbit-hole since yesterday.” Mr. Holroyd had never been formally introduced to the dogs; they were always out with Betty, and he was more than ever confirmed in his first impression. “And Aunt Emma does not care, nor feel it one bit,” she continued passionately. “She says he will come out of himself; perhaps she will be sorry when he is dead, and she loses his legacy.” Strange, he thought, that even Maria Finny had never mentioned that Miss Elizabeth Redmond was out of her mind. “Do not excite yourself,” he said, soothingly. “It will be all right, I am sure; just leave it in my hands, and I will see after him--if you will only allow me to take you home first.” Could a professional mad doctor say more? he thought, with warm self-approval. “Go home,” she echoed, stamping her foot. “And leave him here to die--he that is so fond of me--that is my very shadow--that loves me better than anything in the world. What do you think I am made of?--a block of stone? No, never. I will stay here till he is brought out, either dead or alive--if I stay for a week. Well, what are you waiting for? If you want to be of some use, you might dig.” “Sure it’s only a dog, sir,” explained Pat, as he looked up into his employer’s sorely perplexed countenance. “It’s only Jones, and ’tis himself is a born devil for hunting rabbits, and going to ground like any ferret.”