He looked at her--mentally with a great start--but only for a second. The frank, ingenuous, friendly affection of a child! That was what the words, the tone, the straight glance of the sweet blue eyes expressed! There was a tinge of melancholy in his voice as he replied: "Now you flatter me, little Lyn. You would soon find a battered old fogey like me can be a desperate bore." Then he proceeded to the prosaic and homely occupation of filling and lighting his pipe, smiling to himself sadly over her indignant disclaimer. CHAPTER TEN. AS GOOD AS HER WORD. It was post day at Lannercost, and whereas the delivery of Her Majesty's mails was only of weekly occurrence, the fact constituted a small event. Such delivery was effected by the usual harmless necessary native, who conveyed the mail bag by field and flood from the adjacent Field-cornet's--in this instance from Earle's. "It's just possible, Bayfield, I may hear something by this post which may necessitate my leaving you almost immediately." "Oh, hang it, Blachland! Are you at that game again? Where do you think of moving to next, if not an impertinent question?" "Up-country again. I've interests there still. And things are beginning to look dickey. Lo Ben's crowd is turning restive again. We've most of us thought all along that they were bound to force the old man's hand. It's only a question of time." "So?" And then they fell to talking over that and kindred questions, until finally a moving object, away down the valley, but rapidly drawing nearer, resolved itself into a mounted native. The two men were sitting in the shade at the bottom of one of the gardens, where Bayfield had been doing an odd job or two with a spade-- cutting out a water furrow here, or clearing one there and so forth-- pausing every now and then for a smoke and a desultory chat. "Hey, September! Bring the bag here," he called out in Dutch, as the postboy was about to pass. The boy swung himself from his pony, and handed over the leathern bag to his master. "Great Scott, here's a nuisance!" exclaimed the latter, fumbling in his pockets. "I believe I haven't got the key. It's up at the house. We'll have to send September for it--or go up ourselves and open the bag there." The last thing that Blachland desired was either of these courses. If they sent up for the key, Lyn would be sure to come down with it herself. If they went themselves, the bag would be opened in her presence, and this, for good reasons of his own, he did not wish. In fact he had deftly manoeuvred Bayfield down here with the object of intercepting it. "Ah, here it is!" cried the latter, disentangling a bunch of keys from the recesses of a pocket. "Got into the lining." In a trice the bag was unlocked and its contents extracted by the simple process of turning them out on to the ground.