e mare and ride away.

"We're going to give you a licking, Squire! How's Mrs. Pendyce? My wife
sent her love."

On the Squire's face in the full sun was more than the sun's flush.

"Thanks," he said, "she's very well. She's gone up to London."

"And aren't you going up yourself this season?"

The Squire crossed those leisurely eyes with his own.

"I don't think so," he said slowly.

The Hon. Geoffrey returned to his duties.

"We got poor old Barter for a 'blob'!" he said over his shoulder.

The Squire became aware that Mr. Barter was approaching from behind.

"You see that left-hand fellow?" he said, pouting. "Just watch his foot.
D'you mean to say that wasn't a no-ball? He bowled me with a no-ball.
He's a rank no-batter. That fellow Locke's no more an umpire than----"

He stopped and looked earnestly at the bowler.

The Squire 'did not answer, sitting on his mare as though carved in
stone. Suddenly his throat clicked.

"How's your wife?" he said. "Margery would have come to see her,
but--but she's gone up to London."

The Rector did not turn his head.

"My wife? Oh, going on first-rate. There's another! I say, Winlow,
this is too bad!"

The Hon. Geoffrey's pleasant voice was heard:

"Please not to speak to the man at the wheel!"

The Squire turned the mare and rode away; and the spaniel John, who had
been watching from a measured distance, followed after, his tongue
lolling from his mouth.

The Squire turned through a gate down the main aisle of the home covert,
and the nose and the tail of the spaniel John, who scented creatures to
the left and right, were in perpetual motion. It was cool in there. The
June foliage made one long colonnade, broken by a winding river of sky.
Among the oaks and hazels; the beeches and the elms, the ghostly body of
a birch-tree shone here and there, captured by those grosser trees which
seemed to cluster round her, proud of their prisoner, loth to let her go,
that subtle spirit of their wood. They knew that, were she gone, their
forest lady, wilder and yet gentler than themselves--they would lose
credit, lose the grace and essence of their corporate being.

The Squire dismounted, tethered his horse, and sat under one of those
birch-trees, on the fallen body of an elm. The spaniel John also sat and
loved him with his eyes. And sitting there they thought their thoughts,
but their thoughts were different.

For under this birch-tree Horace Pendyce had s