“I? Home,” I replied with dignity. “You are a Beardsall?” he queried, eyeing me with bloodshot eyes. “I am!” I replied with more dignity, wondering who the fellow could be. He sat a few moments looking at me. It was getting dark in the wood. Then he took up an ebony stick with a gold head, and rose. The stick seemed to catch at my imagination. I watched it curiously as we walked with the old man along the path to the gate. We went with him into the open road. When we reached the clear sky where the light from the west fell full on our faces, he turned again and looked at us closely. His mouth opened sharply, as if he would speak, but he stopped himself, and only said “Good-bye—Good-bye.” “Shall you be all right?” I asked, seeing him totter. “Yes—all right—good-bye, lad.” He walked away feebly into the darkness. We saw the lights of a vehicle on the high-road: after a while we heard the bang of a door, and a cab rattled away. “Well—whoever’s he?” said George laughing. “Do you know,” said I, “it’s made me feel a bit rotten.” “Ay?” he laughed, turning up the end of the exclamation with indulgent surprise. We went back home, deciding to say nothing to the women. They were sitting in the window seat watching for us, mother and Alice and Lettie. “You _have_ been a long time!” said Lettie. “We’ve watched the sun go down—it set splendidly—look—the rim of the hill is smouldering yet. What have you been doing?” “Waiting till your Taurus finished work.” “Now be quiet,” she said hastily, and—turning to him, “You have come to sing hymns?” “Anything you like,” he replied. “How nice of you, George!” exclaimed Alice, ironically. She was a short, plump girl, pale, with daring, rebellious eyes. Her mother was a Wyld, a family famous either for shocking lawlessness, or for extreme uprightness. Alice, with an admirable father, and a mother who loved her husband passionately, was wild and lawless on the surface, but at heart very upright and amenable. My mother and she were fast friends, and Lettie had a good deal of sympathy with her. But Lettie generally deplored Alice’s outrageous behaviour, though she relished it—if “superior” friends were not present. Most men enjoyed Alice in company, but they fought shy of being alone with her. “Would you say the same to me?” she asked. “It depends what you’d answer,” he said, laughingly. “Oh, you’re so bloomin’ cautious. I’d rather have a tack in my shoe than a cautious man, wouldn’t you Lettie?” “Well—it depends how far I had to walk,” was Lettie’s reply—“but if I hadn’t to limp too far——” Alice turned away from Lettie, whom she often found rather irritating. “You do look glum, Sybil,” she said to me, “did somebody want to kiss you?” I laughed—on the wrong side, understanding her malicious feminine reference—and answered: “If they had, I should have looked happy.” “Dear boy, smile now then,”—and she tipped me under the chin. I drew away.