A true horseman, he had identified himself so completely with his steed, and busied himself so earnestly about its wants, that Katerfelto neighed with pleasure to acknowledge the friendly presence as he approached its stall thus stealthily and in the dark. While he hurried to the horse's head, that he might silence this untoward greeting, a slim figure rose from below the manger and glided like a phantom to the door. John Garnet was no less prompt than resolute. In an instant he had seized this shadowy intruder by the throat. Outcry and escape were alike impossible; but his hand opened as if it grasped a red-hot iron, when a half-stifled voice, that he remembered only too well, murmured, "Hold! do not hurt me. I am here to serve you. I will follow you to the end of the world." "Waif!" he exclaimed, in an accent that, smothered as it was, denoted the very extremity of surprise; but even while he spoke, the figure slid through the dark stable out into the night. For a few seconds John Garnet was persuaded that he must be dreaming--the meeting had been so sudden, so unexpected, and so soon over. When he realised the fact, his surprise amounted to dismay. That this impracticable gipsy-girl should have followed him, watched him, and made herself acquainted with his movements, seemed a fatal climax to the disasters of the night. For one disheartening minute he thought of riding back to London, returning Katerfelto to his former owner, and abandoning the whole project. Then he reflected, that under any circumstances he must make his escape before daylight, and so saddled his horse with what alacrity he might. Dawn was breaking as he led the animal out of the court-yard softly and at a walk, though its tramp was smothered in the snores of a stalwart ostler who slept in a loft above, for protection of the stables, and a red streak of sunrise bound the eastern horizon, to which he looked back on emerging from a belt of coppice that skirted the high-road a mile from the inn. Bold as he was, Katerfelto shied at an object moving in the brushwood, while a slim boyish figure sprang out, laid its hand on the horse's shoulder, and looked wistfully up in the rider's face. Waif--for it was none other--attired as a country lad, and only the more beautiful for her disguise, seemed to anticipate no less affectionate a greeting than she was prepared to offer. But already she knew every change of the face she had studied so fatally, and her own fell, while she marked the displeasure that settled on the brows and about the lips she loved. "Speak to me," she murmured, "for pity's sake. I tracked you so patiently, and followed you so far!" "Waif, why are you here?" he asked, while his heart smote him to think of the distance travelled by that slender form, those shapely delicate limbs.