He turned to the left and walked off, and Wyn hurried back to his master, relieved to see Dobbles exactly where he had left him, and Mr Edgar lying, looking up at the trees overhead, evidently perfectly safe and undisturbed. "Oh, please, sir," said Wyn, "here are the flowers. But please, sir, we'd best go home. There's characters about, and--why--wherever can it be?" "Why, what's the matter? You look quite scared. What's missing?" "Please, sir, I met a chap as I don't think had any business there, and he gave me a note for you, and, sir, I can't find it nowhere. I had it in my hand, and I must have dropped it." "I suppose it was one of the men from Ashwood or Raby," said Edgar, mentioning two places in the neighbourhood. "Very careless of you, Wyn, to lose the note, and very silly to get a scare about it. Well," after some time spent in searching, "we must get back now, and to-morrow, if it's fine, I'll come here again, and you can have a hunt for it." Wyn was so upset, or, as he would have expressed it, "put about," by the sight of the stranger, the loss of the note, and by Mr Edgar's rare reproof, that he quite forgot at the moment either to realise to himself or to tell his master that the man could have been no one from the neighbourhood, since he had asked if Mr Edgar was at home, which everyone knew was invariably the case. CHAPTER TEN. FLORENCE'S DUTY. On the same afternoon that Wyn and his master went to see the water-lily pond, Florrie Whittaker, seized with a fit of impatience, went off without leave for a ramble in the wood.