uality and separateness of autumn after the
levelling promiscuity of the summer. The scene was very English and
peaceful; and between it and the two young creatures looking out
upon it there were a thousand links of memory and association.
Suddenly Desmond said:

'Do you remember that bother I got into at Eton, Pam?'

Pamela nodded. Didn't she remember it? A long feud with another
boy--ending in a highly organized fight--absolute defiance of tutor
and housemaster on Desmond's part--and threatened expulsion. The
Squire's irritable pride had made him side ostentatiously with his
son, and Pamela could only be miserable and expect the worst. Then
suddenly the whole convulsion had quieted down, and Desmond's last
year at Eton had been a very happy one. Why? What had happened?
Pamela had never known.

'Well, Arthur heard of it from "my tutor." He and Arthur were at
Trinity together. And Arthur came over from Cambridge and had me out
for a walk, and jawed me, jawed "my tutor," jawed the Head, jawed
everybody. Oh, well no good going into the rotten thing,' said
Desmond, flushing, 'but Arthur was awfully decent anyway.'

Pamela assented mutely. She did not want to talk about Arthur
Chicksands. There was in her a queer foreboding sense about him. She
did not in the least expect him to fall in love with her; yet there
was a dim, intermittent fear in her lest he might become too
important to her, together with a sharp shrinking from the news,
which of course might come any day, that he was going to be married.
She had known him from her childhood, had romped and sparred with
him. He was the gayest, most charming companion; yet he carried with
him, quite unconsciously, something that made it delightful to be
smiled at or praised by him, and a distress when you did not get on
with him, and were quite certain that he thought you silly or
selfish. There was a rumour which reached Mannering after the second
battle of Ypres that he had been killed. The Chicksands' household
believed it for twenty-four hours.

Then he was discovered--gassed and stunned--in a shell-hole, and
there had been a long illness and convalescence. During the
twenty-four hours when he was believed to be dead, Pamela had spent
the April daylight in the depths of the Mannering woods, in tangled
hiding-places that only she knew. It was in the Easter holidays. She
was alone at Mannering with an old governess, while her father was
in London. The little wrinkled F