an arrow before her; accompanying herself with a quaint
musical chant, which she obligingly explained had been taught her as a
child by Pereo. They stopped only at the hedge, where she had that
morning encountered the tramp.

There is little doubt that the rest of the party was disconcerted:
Amita, whose figure was not adapted to this Camilla-like exercise;
Raymond, who was annoyed at the poor girl's discomfiture; and Garnier,
who had lost a golden opportunity, with the faint suspicion of having
looked ridiculous. Only Maruja's eyes, or rather the eyes of her
lamented father, seemed to enjoy it.

"You are too effeminate," she said, leaning against the fence, and
shading her eyes with her fan, as she glanced around in the staring
moonlight. "Civilization has taken away your legs. A man ought to be
able to trust to his feet all day, and to nothing else."

"In fact--a tramp," suggested Raymond.

"Possibly. I think I should like to have been a gypsy, and to have
wandered about, finding a new home every night."

"And a change of linen on the early morning hedges," said Raymond. "But
do you think seriously that you and your sister are suitably clad to
commence to-night. It is bitterly cold," he added, turning up his
collar. "Could you begin by showing a pal the nearest haystack or
hen-roost?"

"Sybarite!" She cast a long look over the fields and down the lane.
Suddenly she started. "What is that?"

She pointed to a tall erect figure slowly disappearing on the other
side of the hedge.

"It's Pereo, only Pereo. I knew him by his long serape," said Garnier,
who was nearest the hedge, complacently. "But what is surprising, he
was not there when we came, nor did he come out of that open field. He
must have been walking behind us on the other side of the hedge."

The eyes of the two girls sought each other simultaneously, but not
without Raymond's observant glance. Amita's brow darkened as she moved
to her sister's side, and took her arm with a confidential pressure
that was returned. The two men, with a vague consciousness of some
contretemps, dropped a pace behind, and began to talk to each other,
leaving the sisters to exchange a few words in a low tone as they
slowly returned to the house.

Meanwhile, Pereo's tall figure had disappeared in the shrubbery, to
emerge again in the open area by the summer-house and the old
pear-tree. The red sparks of two or three cigarettes in the shadow of
the summer-hou