The group of children which had been disturbed by the accident stood round, gaping open-mouthed in admiration, and the loud sound of hurrying oars from a boat rushing across the lake to the rescue added to the excitement of the little hero and heroine. Rosalind’s dress was torn with her rush through the reeds, her shoes wet, her whole frame trembling; while nurse had got her tidy bonnet awry and her hair out of order. But the small adventurers had suffered no harm or strain of any kind. They were jaunty in their perfect success and triumph. “I thought it safest to bring them round to this bit of beach, where they could be landed without any difficulty. Oh, pray don’t say anything about it. It was little more than wading, the water is not deep. And I am amply--Miss Trevanion? I am shocked to see you carrying my coat!” Rosalind turned to the dripping figure by her side with a cry of astonishment. She had been far too much agitated even to make any question in her mind who it was. Now she raised her eyes to meet--what? the eyes that were like Johnny’s, the dark, wistful, appealing look which had come back to her mind so often. He stood there with the water running from him, in the glow of exertion, his face thinner and less boyish, but his look the same as when he had come to her help on the country road, and by the little lake at Highcourt. It flashed through Rosalind’s mind that he had always come to her help. She uttered the “Oh!” which is English for every sudden wonder, not knowing what to say. “I hope,” he said, “that you may perhaps remember I once saw you at Highcourt in the old days, in a little difficulty with a boat. This was scarcely more than that.” “I recollect,” she said, her breath coming fast; “you were very kind--and now-- Oh, this is a great deal more; I owe you--their lives.” “Pray don’t say so. It was nothing--any one would have done it, even if there had been a great deal more to do, but there was nothing; it was little more than wading.” Then he took his coat from her hand, which she had been holding all the time. “It is far more--it is too much that you should have carried my coat, Miss Trevanion. It is more than a reward.” She had thought of the face so often, the eyes fixed upon her, and had forgotten what doubts had visited her mind when she saw him before. Now, when she met the gaze of those eyes again, all her doubts came back. There was a faint internal struggle, even while she remembered that he had saved the lives of the children. “I know,” she said, recollecting herself, “that we have met before, and that I had other things to thank you for, though nothing like this. But you must forgive me, for I don’t know your name.”