he arch query she had let fly at him was accompanied with a
certain sparkle of the laughing eye, such as ere now had, in his
experience, preceded a stroke of the feminine claw.

As he walked up and down, uneasy, awaiting the fair one's return, her
father came up, and asked him to dine and sleep. What made the
invitation more welcome was, that it in reality came from Kate.

"She tells me she has borrowed your horse," said the Squire; "so, says
she, I am bound to take care of you till day-light; and, indeed, our
ways are perilous at night."

"She is an angel!" cried the lover, all his ardor revived by this
unexpected trait. "My horse, my house, my hand, and my heart are all at
her service, by night and day."

Mr. Peyton, to wile away the time before dinner, invited him to walk out
and see--a hog, deadly fat, as times went. But Neville denied himself
that satisfaction, on the plea that he had his orders to await Miss
Peyton's return where he was. The Squire was amused at his excessive
docility, and winked, as much as to say, "I have been once upon a time
in your plight," and so went and gloried in his hog alone.

The lover fell into a delicious reverie. He enjoyed, by anticipation,
the novel pleasure of an evening passed all alone with this charming
girl. The father, being friendly to his suit, would go to sleep after
dinner; and then, by the subdued light of a wood-fire, he would murmur
his love into that sweet ear for hours, until the averted head should
come round by degrees, and the delicious lips yield a coy assent. He
resolved the night should not close till he had surprised, overpowered,
and secured his lovely bride.

These soft meditations reconciled him for a while to the prolonged
absence of their object.

In the midst of them, he happened to glance through the window; and he
saw a sight that took his very breath away, and rooted him in amazement
to the spot. About a mile from the house, a lady in a scarlet habit was
galloping across country as the crow flies. Hedge, ditch, or brook,
nothing stopped her an instant; and as for the pace,--

"She seemed in running to devour the way."

It was Kate Peyton on his piebald horse.

CHAPTER IV.

Griffith Gaunt, unknown to himself, had lost temper as well as heart
before he took the desperate step of leaving the country. Now his temper
was naturally good; and ere he had ridden two miles, he recovered it. To
his cost; for the sustaining force of anger bein