the trees, gun tucked under his left arm.

"No luncheon, no salad, no champagne-cup, no cigarette!" he
called; "all gone! all gone! Molly's smoked my last--"

"Jack Marche, where have you been?" demanded Molly Hesketh. "No,
you needn't dodge my accusing finger! Barbara, look at him!"

"It's a pretty finger--if Sir Thorald will permit me to say so,"
said Jack, laughing and setting his gun up against a tree.
"Dorrie, didn't you save any salad? Ricky, you devouring scourge,
there's not a bit of caviare! I'm hungry--Oh, thanks, Betty, you
did think of the prodigal, didn't you?"

"It was Cecil," she said, slyly; "I was saving it for him. What
did you shoot, Jack?"

"Now you people listen and I'll tell you what I didn't shoot."

"A poor little hawk?" asked Betty.

"No--a poor little wolf!"

In the midst of cries of astonishment and exclamations Sir
Thorald arose, waving a napkin.

"I knew it!" he said--"I knew I saw a wolf in the woods day
before yesterday, but I didn't dare tell Molly; she never
believes me."

"And you deliberately chose to expose us to the danger of being eaten
alive?" said Lady Hesketh, in an awful voice. "Ricky, I'm going to
get into that boat at once; Dorothy--Betty Castlemaine--bring Alixe
and Barbara Lisle. We are going to embark at once."

"Ricky and his boat-load of beauty," laughed Sir Thorald.
"Really, Molly, I hesitated to tell you because--I was afraid--"

"What, you horrid thing?--afraid he'd bite me?"

"Afraid you'd bite the wolf, my dear," he whispered so that
nobody but she heard it; "I say, Ricky, we ought to have a wolf
drive! What do you think?"

The subject started, all chimed in with enthusiasm except Alixe
von Elster, who sat with big, soulful eyes fixed on Sir Thorald
and trembled for that bad young man's precious skin.

"We have two weeks to stay yet," said Cecil, glancing
involuntarily at Betty Castlemaine; "we can get up a drive in a
week."

"You are not going, Cecil," said Betty, in a low voice, partly to
practise controlling him, partly to see him blush.

Lady Hesketh, however, took enough interest in the sport to
insist, and Jack Marche promised to see the head-keeper at once.

"I think I see him now," said Sir Thorald--"no, it's Bosquet's
boy from the post-office. Those are telegrams he's got."

The little postman's son came trotting across the meadow, waving
two blue envelopes.

"Monsieur le Capitaine Rickerl von Elster and Monsieur Jack
Marche--two