road free, the pace good. The gentleman's tone when he spoke
was rather indicative of enjoyment.

'Who is plotting against you?'

'Plotting!--'

'And now disappointed?'

'O, it is just some of Gotham's stupidity,' said Wych Hazel,
with a voice not yet at rest: she had been oddly conscious of
wishing that no one should hear her whispered good-night to
Mrs. Seaton and follow to see with whom she went home. 'He and
I are always at cross purposes.'

'A lady in a white dress brought him the message, he says. But
to change the subject--What is your favourite pleasure?'

'Riding the wind.'

'Do you remember once--a great while ago--promising to give me
an afternoon some time?'

'Did I? it must have been a great while,' said Wych Hazel. 'O
yes, I do remember. Well?'

'Will you put to-morrow afternoon at my disposal?'

'If the thing to be done is within walking distance. Mr.
Falkirk will not let me ride.'

'I have brought home, I think, a nice little saddle horse,
which I should like to have you try,' Rollo went on, not
heeding this.

'Oh!' she said, with unmistakeable longing. 'But he has made
me refuse at least five-and-forty just such horses this
summer.'

'He will be amenable to reason to-morrow,' said Rollo
comfortably. 'Shall I tell you what I want to do with you
after I have got you on horseback?'

'Let me run--I hope,' said Wych Hazel.

'I am going to take you where you have never been yet; through
Morton Hollow and the mills, to see my old nurse, who lives a
little way beyond them.'

'I am not going through Morton Hollow,' said Hazel, decidedly.

'Why not?'

'You never heard of seven _women_ who could "render a reason,"
did you?' said the girl, with a laugh in her voice.

'My old nurse is a character,' Rollo went on. 'She is a Norse
woman. My mother, I must tell you, was also a Norse woman. My
father's business at one time kept him much in Denmark and at
St. Petersburg; and at Copenhagen he met my mother, who had
been sent there to school. And when my mother forsook her
country, the old nurse, not old then, left all to go with her.
She was my nurse in my earliest years, and remained our most
faithful friend while we were a family. She made afterwards a
not very happy marriage; and when her husband died just before
I went to Europe, she was left alone and poor. I arranged a
small house for her in the neighbourhood of the Hollow; and
there she lives--a kind of mysterious oracle to the people