sorceress was your safest doctor. Everywhere there
was the hush and coolness of fast-coming night. The children's voices
were stilled. This last stage of the game was a thing of breathless
interest.

Vixen's footsteps drifted lower down into the wooded hollow; insensibly
she was coming towards the edge of the treacherously green bog which
has brought many a bold rider to grief in these districts, and still
she had caught no one. She began to think that she had roamed ever so
far away, and was in danger of losing herself altogether, or at least
losing everybody else, and being left by herself in the forest
darkness. The grassy hollow in which she was wandering had an
atmosphere of solitude.

She was on the point of taking off the handkerchief that Mr. Scobel had
bound so effectually across her eyes, when her outstretched hands
clasped something--a substantial figure, distinctly human, clad in
rough cloth.

Before she had time to think who it was she had captured, a pair of
strong arms clasped her; she was drawn to a broad chest; she felt a
heart beating strong and fast against her shoulder, while lips that
seemed too familiar to offend kissed hers with all the passion of a
lover's kiss.

"Don't be angry," said a well-known voice; "I believe it's the rule of
the game. If it isn't I'm sure it ought to be."

A hand, at once strong and gentle, took off the handkerchief, and in
the soft woodland twilight she looked up at Roderick Vawdrey's face,
looking down upon her with an expression which she presumed must mean a
brotherly friendliness--the delight of an old friend at seeing her
after a long interval.

She was not the less angry at that outrageous unwarrantable kiss.

"It is not the rule of the game amongst civilised people; though it
possibly may be among plough-boys and servant-maids!" she exclaimed
indignantly. "You are really a most ungentlemanlike person! I wonder
Lady Mabel Ashbourne has not taught you better manners."

"Is that to be my only reward for saving you from plunging--at least
ankle-deep--in the marshy ground yonder? But for me you would have been
performing a boggy version of Ophelia by this time."

"How did you come here?"

"I have been to Langley Brook for a day's fly-fishing, and was tramping
home across country in a savage humour at my poor sport, when I heard
the chatter of small voices, and presently came upon the Scobels and
the school-children. The juveniles were in a state of alarm