"I shouldn't make a bad light porter," he mused, "only there are no light porters now. I wonder what will become of me. Anyhow, I'd rather live on an Abernethy biscuit a day than take a penny from Stephen or borrow ten pounds from Skettle. Stephen. Squire of Hurst Leigh! He'll make a funny squire. I don't believe he knows a pheasant from a barn-door fowl, or a Berkshire pig from a pump-handle. I should have made a better squire than he. Never mind; it's no use crying over spilt milk!" Jack was certainly not the man to cry over milk spilt or strewn, and long before the train had reached Arkdale he had forgotten his ill-luck and the mystery attending the will, and all his thoughts were fixed on the beautiful girl who dwelt in a woodman's hut in the midst of Warden Forest. Forbidden fruit is always the sweetest, and Jack felt that the fruit was forbidden here. What on earth business had he, a ruined man, to be lounging about Warden, or any other forest, in the hope of getting a sight of, or a few words with, a girl, whom, be she as lovely as a peri, could be nothing to him? What good could he do? On the contrary, perhaps, a great deal of harm; for ten to one the woodman would cut up rough, and there would be a row. But he felt, somehow, that he had made a promise, and promises were sacred things to Jack--excepting always promises to pay--and a row had rather a charm for him. Nevertheless, when the train drew up at Arkdale Station, he had quite resolved to wait until the London train came up, and as such resolutions generally end, it ended in giving up the idea and starting for Warden. Jack was not sentimental. Men with good appetites and digestions seldom are; but his heart beat as he entered the charmed center of the great elms and oaks which fringed the forest, and the whole atmosphere seemed full of a strange fascination. "I wonder what she will say, how she will look?" he kept asking himself. "I'd walk a thousand miles to hear her voice, to look into her eyes. Oh, I'm a worse idiot than old Skettle! What can her eyes and her voice be to me? By Jove, though, I might turn woodman and--and----" marry her, he was going to say, but the thought seemed so bold, so--well, so coarse in connection with such a beautiful person, that Jack actually blushed and frowned at his effrontery. He found no difficulty in recognizing the way, and strode along at a good pace, which, however, grew slower as he neared the clearing in which stood Gideon Rolfe's cottage, and just before he emerged from the wood into it he stopped, and felt with a faint wonder that his heart was beating fast. It was a new sensation for Master Jack, and it upset him. "This won't do," he said; "I must keep cool. A child would get the better of me while I am like this; and I mustn't forget I've got to face that wooden-faced woodman. Courage, my boy, courage!" And with a resolute front he stepped into the clearing.