George and Bess sauntered along the road, dusty, tired, and travel-stained. George’s face was white and haggard, and he had let his beard grow during the fortnight, which did not add to the picturesqueness of his appearance. Bess, too, in the hurried journeyings and constant moving from pillar to post, had neglected her toilette somewhat, and had had to make shift as best she could; so that as they tramped along they might easily have been mistaken for something much lower in the social scale than the heir to the Heritage estates and his young wife. ‘We must not get to the house till dusk, Bess,’ said George, as they strolled along. ‘I couldn’t go in this sight in broad daylight.’ ‘No,’ answered Bess; ‘it will be best to wait till it’s dusk, George dear; there’ll be nobody about then. Old Dick will have gone home, and there’ll only be father.’ ‘Ah!’ exclaimed George eagerly, ‘I’d forgotten that. You can go first and see your father, and I can come and slip into the lodge and wait about till the coast is clear, and then go up to the house.’ Now that he was nearing his home his heart was beginning to fail him, and the old pride, which trouble had broken down for a while, was beginning to reassert itself. Just outside the village in which Heritage Park stands there is a small wood. The high road skirts it, and it forms a tempting place for the dusty wayfarer to seek shelter in for a while. Many a tramp on his road from workhouse to workhouse wanders into this wood, and, flinging himself down, enjoys a siesta, forgetting his troubles and dreaming such dreams as it pleases Nature to send him in the place of realities. When George and Bess came to the wood, they determined to make it their halting-place for a while. It was only afternoon, and there were a couple of good hours before it would be dark enough for them to enter the village safely. They crept into the wood to a spot which had been a favourite one with them in their sweethearting days, and sat down. The fresh air and the long walk had tired them, and after a while they fell asleep. While the tired pilgrims rested, a pair of very different travellers passed leisurely along the high road. They were an elderly clergyman and a young gentleman. The clergyman was tall and burly, and wore his garb with a curious awkwardness, that would have impressed the critical observer with an idea that his living was a rural one. The young gentleman, though dressed in the height of fashion, was a little gaudy about the necktie, and had a sharp, cunning look upon his face, and a decided squint in the deeply-set, eager, restless eyes, that seemed to take in the four points of the compass at once. The clergyman and his son were staying at a local hostelry hard by for a day or two, and were enjoying the delightful walks in which the neighbourhood abounds.