ing against the bottom of the vehicle in perpetual
motion. He kept giving his paw first to Vixen and then to Rorie, and
exacted a great deal of attention, insomuch that Mr. Vawdrey exclaimed:

"Vixen, if you don't keep that dog within bounds, I shall think him as
great a nuisance as a stepson. I offered to marry you, you know, not
you and your dog."

"You are very rude!" cried Vixen.

"You don't expect me to be polite, I hope. What is the use of marrying
one's old playfellow if one cannot be uncivil to her now and then? To
me you will always be the tawny-haired little girl I used to tease."

"Who used to tease you, you mean. You were very meek in those days."

Oh, what a happy voyage that was, over the summer sea! They sat side by
side upon the bridge, sheltered from wind and sun, and talked the happy
nonsense lovers talk: but which can hardly be so sweet between lovers
whose youth and childhood have been spent far apart, as between these
two who had been reared amidst the same sylvan world, and had every
desire and every thought in unison. How brief the voyage seemed. It was
but an hour or so since Roderick had been buying peaches and grapes, as
they lay at the end of the pier at Guernsey, and here were the Needles
and the chalky cliffs and undulating downs of the Wight. The Wight!
That meant Hampshire and home!

"How often those downs have been our weather-glass, Rorie, when we have
been riding across the hills between Lyndhurst and Beaulieu," said
Vixen.

She had a world of questions to ask him about all that had happened
during her exile. She almost expected to hear that Lyndhurst steeple
had fallen; that the hounds had died of old age; that the Knightwood
Oak had been struck by lightning; or that some among those calamities
which time naturally brings had befallen the surroundings of her home.
It was the strangest thing in the world to hear that nothing had
happened, that everything was exactly the same as it had been when she
went away. That dreary year of exile had seemed long enough for
earthquakes and destructions, or even for slow decay.

"Do you know what became of Arion?" asked Vixen, almost afraid to shape
the question.

"Oh, I believe he was sold, soon after you left home," Rorie answered
carelessly.

"Sold!" echoed Vixen drearily. "Poor dear thing! Yes, I felt sure
Captain Winstanley would sell him. But I hoped----"

"What?"

"That some one I knew might buy him. Lord Mallow perhaps."

"Lo