"Hang it! you'd try a saint's temper," growled he, wrinkling his brows into a most unsanctified frown, and letting her go with such a sudden abruptness that she stumbled a little, and in the effort to maintain her footing on the narrow plank the basket slipped from her arm, and would have fallen into the water had not Lee caught it, with a dexterous turn of his wrist. "See now, Ruth," he said, as he restored it to her, his eye grown radiant again in his pride at his clever legerdemain, "if you're not at my mercy after all. Might I not have been revenged for your refusal, and helped myself to a peep into this mighty particular basket, if I wasn't honour bright from top to toe?" [Sidenote: The mysterious basket.] "But you are, Lawrence, aren't you?" challenged she, with a strange earnestness, that sent his eyes, which were gazing into hers, back to the basket; "and evil be to him who evil thinks," she went on. "And--" "Oh, plague take it!" he interrupted impatiently; "what are you driving at? Now for the basket. Come." "You really care to see inside it?" "Not a straw, my dear child," he said loftily. "'Tis full of emptiness, I daresay. That's just what delights you girls more than anything; teasing and tantalizing a fellow all about nothing." "Ay, but there is something in it. Something I was bringing to the Hall on purpose to show you, and--and to ask your opinion about. And yet--and yet--" she went on wistfully, "I hope you won't be able to--to give me one." "Why, my dear girl," rejoined he with a superior smile, "how mighty mysterious we are, to be sure!" "'Tis a fearful-looking thing, let me tell you," she said, gingerly raising one corner of her basket lid. "Some queer fish, is it?--out of the river?" he asked eagerly, for he was a mighty fisherman. "Out of the river," nodded she. "A pike of some sort perhaps." "Yes, I should say, of some sort." "You dear, splendid, diamond of a girl," ecstatically cried Lawrence, "as I live 'tis a pike! can't I see it gleaming?" and he clutched at the concealing hay--"a big silver pike!" "No, a steel one," she said, as the weapon lay exposed in all its nakedness, and steadily she lifted her eyes to his face. [Sidenote: Found out.] It had grown ashen white, and he staggered back for support against the bridge rail. "Ruth!" he gasped, as the handful of hay dropped from his powerless fingers and floated away on the swirl of the stream, "what is the meaning of this?" "That you must tell me, Lawrence." "Where did you find it?" he went on. "In the river. The river Lea. Close by the water steps in Mistress Sheppard's garden. And when? Last night, while you were in the King's Arms, talking to those men. The men," she went on in steady tones, though he was biting his lip, and his pale face flushed painfully, "who were there; instead of going straight home, as you ought to have done--" "Ought!" angrily interrupted he; "and who made you spy over me?"