arents to possess himself of a
hatful of speckled bluish-green eggs for the collection wherewith he was
to win the tricksome and skittish heart of Mistress Peggy Ramsay, who
(tell it not in the ducal house which her charms now adorn!) was herself
no inexpert tree-climber in the days when Rollo Blair temporarily broke
his boyish heart for her sake.

So in brief (and without a thought of Peggy) Rollo found himself upon
the ground, his dress a little disordered and his hands somewhat
scratched, but safe behind his screen of leaves. Remembering the advice
of the Sergeant, Rollo waited for the appointed signal to fall upon his
ear from above. He could see nothing indeed across the lawn but the
branches of the pine trees waving low, and beneath them feathery syringa
bushes, upland fern, and evergreens with leathery leaves.

What might be hidden there? In another moment he might rush upon the
points of a hundred knives. Another minute, and, like the good Messire
Francois, cure of Meudon, it might be his to set forth in quest of the
Great Perhaps.

At the thought he shrugged his shoulders and repeated to himself those
other last words of the same learned doctor of Montpellier, "Ring down
the curtain--the farce is over!"

But at that same moment he thought of little Concha up aloft and the
bitterness died out of his heart as quickly as it had come.

No, the play was not yet played out, and it had been no farce. There was
yet other work for him--perhaps another life better than this
cut-and-thrust existence, ever at the mercy of bullet and sword's point.
He stood up straight and listened, hearing for the first five minutes
nothing but the soft wind of the night among the leaves, and from the
town the barking of the errant and homeless curs which, in the streets
and gutters, yelped, scrambled, and tore at each other for scraps of
offal and thrice-gnawed bone.

From above came the contented twitter of a swallow nestling under the
leaves, yet with a curious carrying quality in it too, at once low and
far-reaching. It was the Sergeant's signal for his attempt.

Rollo set his teeth hard, thought of Concha, bent his head low, and,
like a swift-drifting shadow, sped silently across the smooth upland
turf. The thick leaves of the laurel parted before him, the sword-flower
of Spain pricked him with its pointed leaves, and then closed like a
spiked barrier behind him. A blackbird fled noisily to quieter haunts.
The frogs ceased the