"I'd like to roll him in the mud and you'd like to have me do it, wouldn't you, 'Omi?" Naomi, trudging confidingly by his side, looked inquiringly out of her big eyes, stars with plenty of dew on them now, for during the excitement she had lifted up her voice in wailing and the tears had flowed freely. Not until the riders drew rein at "The Hall" did Henry Mogridge overtake his cousin in the headlong race home. As it was, she dismounted before he could offer assistance and ran up the steps and across the white pillared veranda into the great wainscoted hall. An instant she paused, looking up at the portrait of a beautiful woman hanging there, and then went to her room. The flickering light from the logs in the big fireplace relieved the shadows on the face in the frame, a face so like that of the girl's as to leave no doubt whence she had inherited her charms. The colour of hair and eyes, the poise of head, all were strikingly like, but in the girl's face was a wilful recklessness, perhaps due to lack of a mother's care, the mother she had never known, but more than probable an inheritance from her father, the reckless, hot-headed, sporting squire. At table that evening the girl said little and made an excuse to leave before the last course. Would her cousin tell her father? At the thought a look of defiance was in the girl's face, a look not pleasant to see there. As for the youth with the long nose and the narrow eyes, he had other plans for the present. Just now he was making himself as companionable as possible to his uncle, and it must be admitted he knew somewhat of the ways in which to do this. He told of the latest plays and scandals, to all of which the squire listened with occasional interruptions and allusions to what he knew of the London of the Fifties. "Jupiter!" cried Mogridge, "but I'd think you'd find the Old Dominion mighty tame after the pleasures and associations you enjoyed in that good old town." "It's all in adapting one's self, my boy. I'm a bit old and Lisbeth is too young to show you what pleasures the Old Dominion really can afford. I'll have to turn you over to the Reverend Pothero. He's a rare blade and sure cure for ennui." "We hear tales of some of your Virginia parsons, and the joke of it is the stories, many of them at least, come from churchmen." "Oh, well, some things might be better, I suppose, but what can you expect when so few desire to take up the work in this country? To tell the truth, it sometimes was confoundly lonely at The Hall before Pothero came. But you haven't told me anything of the government's latest policy with respect to these colonies. Will Lord North's hand be strong on the helm and what have we to fear from that arch demagogue, Pitt?" "North's hand will be as firm as the king's and no firmer. Pitt will be dead when he has ceased to be a demagogue. The king speaks of him as 'That Trumpet of Sedition,'" replied Mogridge with an air of sagacity.