had just flashed past a labourer in the
road--known to his cronies as the Flap-eared Denizen of the
Turnip-patch--a labourer who in the dear dead days of Queen Victoria
would have touched his hat humbly, but who now, in this horrible age of
attempts to level all class distinctions, actually went on lighting his
pipe! Alas, that the respectful deference of the poor toward the rich is
now a thing of the past! So thought the Virile Benedict of the
Libraries, and in thinking this he had let his mind wander from the
important business of guiding his bicycle! In another moment he had run
into the Little Grey Woman of the Night-Light!

She had seen him coming and had given a warning cry, but it was too
late. The next moment he shot over his handle-bars; but even as he
revolved through the air he wondered how old she really was, and what,
if any, was her income. For since the death of the Little White Lady he
had formed a habit of marrying elderly women for their money, and his
fifth or sixth wife had perished of old age only a few months ago.

[_Hall Caine_ (waking up). _Who, pray, is the Little White Lady?_

_Mrs. Barclay. His first wife. She comes in my book, "The Broken Halo,"
now in its two hundredth edition._

_Hall Caine_ (annoyed). _Tut!_]

"Jove," he said cheerily, as he picked himself and her and his bicycle
up, "that was a nasty spill. As my Aunt Louisa used to say to the curate
when he upset the milk-jug into her lap, 'No milk, thank you.'" His
brown eyes danced with amusement as he related this reminiscence of his
boyhood. To the Little Grey Woman he seemed to exhale youth from every
pore.

"What did your Aunt Louisa say when her ankle was sprained?" she asked
with a rueful smile.

In an instant the merry banter faded from the Virile Benedict's brown
eyes, and was replaced by the commanding look of one who has taken a
brilliant degree in all his medical examinations.

"Allow me," he said brusquely; "I am a doctor." He bent down and
listened to her ankle.

It did not take Dr. Dick Cameron's quick ear long to find out all there
was to know. His manner became very gentle and his voice very low; and,
though he continued to exhale youth, he did it less ostentatiously than
before.

"I must carry you home," he said, picking her up in his strong young
arms; "you cannot go to church to-day."

"But the curate is preaching!"

Dr. Dick murmured something profane under his breath about curates. He
had, alas! the