Peter responded to his rider's adjuration to go on in his customary way--to wit, he raised his head and whisked his tail, and went on, but without the slightest increase of speed. Oldroyd turned him out of the lane, through one of the game preserves, and he rode thoughtfully on for a couple of miles, with the peculiar smell of the bracken pervading the air as Peter crushed the stems beneath his hoofs. At times, as he rode through some opening where the sun beat down heavily, there was the pungent, lemony, resinous odour of the pines wafted to his nostrils, and once it was so strong that the doctor pulled up to inhale it. "What a lunatic I was," he thought, "to come and settle down in a place like this. Nature wants no doctors here; she does all the work herself--except the accidents," he added laughingly. "Poor old Hayle yonder; I don't think she would have made so good a job of him." He rode on again through the hot afternoon sunshine, going more and more out of his way; but he did not see the major with his creel, neither did the lady attendant upon some of his walks make his sore heart begin beating. He had just come to the conclusion that he had ridden all this way round for nothing, when, as he wound round a mossy carpeted drive, he saw in the distance, framed in with green against a background of sky, a couple of figures, of which one, a lady, was holding out something to the other, a gipsy-looking fellow, which he took and thrust into his pocket, becoming conscious at the same moment of the doctor's approach. "Looks like my young poaching friend, Caleb Kent," thought Oldroyd, as the man touched his cap obsequiously and plunged at once in through the thick undergrowth and was gone, while the lady drew herself up and came toward him. Oldroyd's acquaintanceship was of the most distant kind, and he merely raised his hat as he passed, noting that the face, which looked haughtily in his, was flushed and hot as his bow was returned. "Why, that young scoundrel has been begging. Met her alone out here in this wood," thought Oldroyd, when he had ridden on for a few yards; and, on the impulse of the moment, he dragged the unwilling pony's head round, and, to the little animal's astonishment, struck his heels into its ribs and forced it to canter after the lady they had passed. She did not hear the approach for a few minutes, but was walking on hurriedly with her head bent down, till, the soft beat of the pony's hoofs close behind rousing her, she turned suddenly a wild and startled face. "I beg your pardon--Miss Emlin of The Warren, I believe?" said Oldroyd, raising his hat again. There was a distant bow. "You will excuse my interference," he continued; "but these woods are lonely, and I could not help seeing that man had accosted you." Marjorie's face was like wax now in its pallor. "I thought so," said Oldroyd to himself. Then aloud,--"He was begging, and frightened you?"