highroad through the larch wood."

She turned into the path, and, though she had not expected him to
accompany her, the man walked beside her. Still she did not resent it.
His manner was deferential, and she liked his face, while there was,
after all, no reason why he should stay behind when he was going the
same way. He walked beside her silently for several minutes as they went
on through the gloom of the larches, where a sweet, resinous odor crept
into the still evening air, and then he looked up as they came to a
towering pine.

"Have you many of those trees over here?" he asked.

A light dawned upon the girl, for, though he had spoken without a
perceptible accent, she had been slightly puzzled by something in his
speech and appearance.

"I believe they're not uncommon. You are an American?"

Wyllard laughed. "No," he replied. "I was born in Western Canada, but I
think I'm as English as you are, in some respects, though I never quite
realized it until to-night. It isn't exactly because my father came from
this country, either."

The girl was astonished at this answer, and still more at the indefinite
something in his manner which seemed to indicate that he expected her to
understand, as, indeed, she did. Her only dowry had been an expensive
education and she remembered that the influence of the isle she lived in
had in turn fastened on Saxons, Norsemen, Normans, and made them
Englishmen. What was more, so far as she had read, those who had gone
out South or Westwards had carried that influence with them, and, under
all their surface changes, and sometimes their grievances against the
Motherland, were, in the great essentials, wholly English still.

"But," she remarked at random, "how can you be sure that I'm English?"

It was quite dark in among the trees, but she fancied there was a smile
in her companion's eyes.

"Oh," he answered simply, "you couldn't be anything else!"

She accepted this as a compliment, though she knew that it had not been
his intention to flatter her. His general attitude since she had met him
scarcely suggested such, a lack of good taste. She was becoming mildly
interested in the stranger, but she possessed several essentially
English characteristics, and it did not appear advisable to encourage
him too much. She said nothing further, and it was he who spoke first.

"I wonder," he said, "if you knew a young lad who went out to Canada a
few years ago. His name was Pattinson--Henry