way from the water, loosened your neckerchief and finding you
alive, left you to recover."

"Dear God!" said Millicent, shivering all down her spine, "d'you mean to
tell me an unknown poaching man carried me in his arms a hundred yards,
William?"

"I mean that," answered Parsloe, "and if we had the chap's boot, we should
know who 'twas."

So they parted, and John he went home very angry indeed at such triumphant
malefactors, and though Millicent tried her bestest to be angry also, such
is the weakness of human nature that she couldn't work up no great flood
of rage. And when she was alone in her bed that night, for it was her
father's turn to watch over her mother, she felt that unknown sinner's
arms around her again and his wicked hands at her neckerchief, and
couldn't help wondering what it would have been like if she'd come to and
found herself in that awful position.

Then Milly Meadows recovered and John, along with William Parsloe, Harry
Wade, and a few more stout men, plotted a plot for the poachers and combed
the plantations on a secret night in a way as they'd never done afore; but
they failed and had Dean Woods all to themselves, though the very next
night there was another slaughter and a lot of birds lost.

And a bit after the pheasant season finished, John Meadows heard that the
master reckoned 'twas time his head-keeper made a dignified retirement and
let a younger man--William Parsloe in fact--take his place.

But while John felt sorry for himself in this matter, yet was far too sane
and common-sensible to resent it, another wondrous thing fell out, and
Harry Wade got in a rare sort of fix that promised more fret and strain
than all his other adventures put together. For, along of one thing and
another, though the true details never reached but two ears, he was up
against a new and tremendous experience and from being a heart-whole man
with no great admiration on the women, he felt a wakening and a stir and
knew 'twas love.

For Millicent Meadows he went through the usual torments, and his case
weren't bettered by William Parsloe neither, because when he confessed to
the man, who had got to be his friend, that Millicent was a piece very
much out of the common, Bill told him that he weren't the first by many as
had thought the same.

"But she's not for men," said Parsloe. "All sorts have offered, and good
'uns, including myself I may tell you in confidence; but the man ain't
born to win Millicent