ind a very ready
acceptance. The girl was coming and going from the kitchen in the
discharge of her duties, and on one of her journeys she brought a
parchment map in her hand, saying: "Here's a paper that Jim, the
driver, told me to show you. It gives all the roads atween Kendal and
Carlisle. So you may see for yourself whether your friends could get
round about to Wy'bern."

Robbie spread out the map on the kitchen table, and at once proceeded,
with the help of the chambermaid, to trace out the roads that were
open to Ralph and Sim to take. It was a labyrinthine web, that map,
and it taxed the utmost ingenuity of both Robbie and his little
acquaintance to make head or tail of it.

"Here you are," cried Robbie, with the air of a man making a valuable
discovery, "here's the milestones--one, two, three--them's milestones,
thou knows."

"Tut, you goose; that's only the scale," said the girl; "see what's
printed, 'Scale of miles.'"

"Oh, ey, lass," said Robbie, not feeling sure what "scale" might mean,
but too shrewd to betray his ignorance a second time in the presence
of this learned chambermaid.

The riddle, nevertheless, defied solution. However much they pored
over the map, it was still a maze of lines.

"It's as widderful as poor old Sim's face," said Robbie.

Robbie and the chambermaid put their heads together in more senses
than one. The map was most inconveniently small. Two folks could not
consult it at the same time without coming into really uncomfortable
proximity.

"There you are," said Robbie, reaching over, pipe in hand, to where
the girl was intent on some minute point.

Suddenly there was a cloud of smoke over the map. It also enveloped
the students of geography. Then, somehow, there was a sly smack of
lips.

"And there _you_ are," said the girl, with a roguish laugh, as she
brought Robbie a great whang over the ear and shot away.

Jim, the driver, came into the kitchen at that moment on his way to
bed, and unravelled the mystery of the map by showing that it was
possible for Robbie's friends to go off the Carlisle road towards
Gaskarth and Wythburn at the village of Askham.

Robbie was satisfied with this explanation, and did his best under the
circumstances to rest content until nine o'clock with the harbor into
which he had drifted. He succeeded more completely, perhaps, in this
endeavor than might be expected, when the peril of his friends and his
allegiance to Liza Branthwaite is take