th the saddle
back to front, the curb-bit choking the horse's throat, the brow-band
tightly strapped around the poor beast's nostrils, the surcingle
trailing in the dust.

With improvised masks over their faces, they mounted the steed and set
out for adventure, the horse seeming to comprehend its strange burden
and stepping as lightly as its tortures would permit, while the saddle
slid cheerfully about its back, threatening any moment to roll the
desperados on to the road.

They had just emerged from the estate into the public highway, when a
passing butcher's cart stopped their progress. The younger Durwent,
who had been mastering the art of retaining his seat while his steed
was in motion, was unprepared for its cessation, and promptly
overbalanced over the horse's shoulder, reaching the road head first,
and discharging a couple of pellets from the shotgun into a fleshy part
of the butcher-boy's anatomy.

The groom was dismissed; the butcher-boy received ten pounds; Richard
(when it was certain that concussion of the brain was not going to
materialise) was soundly whipped; and Elise was banished for
forty-eight hours to her room, issuing with a carefully concocted plan
to waylay the rector coming from church, steal the collection, and
purchase with the ill-gotten gains the sole proprietary interests in
the village sweet-shop.

There is little doubt but that the _coup_ would have been attempted had
not Lord Durwent decided that the influence of his sister was not good
for Dick, and sent him to a preparatory school at Bexhill-on-Sea, there
to imbibe sea-air and some little learning, and await his entrance into
Eton.

Robbed of her brother's stimulating loyalty, Elise relapsed into a
sulky obedience to her governess and her mother. To their puny vision
it seemed that her attitude towards them was one of haughty aloofness,
and everything possible was done to subdue her spirit. Being unable to
see that the child was lonely, and too proud to admit her craving for
sympathetic companionship, they tried to tame the thoroughbred as they
would a mule.

Only when Dick returned for holidays would her petulant moods vanish,
and in his company her old vitality sparkled like the noonday sun upon
the ocean's surface. And if her affection for him knew no variation,
his was no less true. The friendships and the adventures of school
were forgotten in the comradeship of his sister as, over the fields of
Roselawn or on the te