put his hand to his cap again. "Miss Denys?"

"No. Mrs. Denys. Good-bye!"

She was gone. He heard the light feet running up the wet gravel drive and
then the quick opening of a door. It closed again immediately, with
decision, and he stood alone in the wintry dusk.

Caesar crept to him and grovelled abjectly in the mud. The young man
stood motionless, staring at the Vicarage gates, a slight frown between
his brows. He was not tall, but he had the free pose of an athlete and
the bearing of a prince.

Suddenly he glanced down at his cringing companion and broke into a
laugh. "Get up, Caesar, you fool! And think yourself lucky that you've
got any sound bones left! You'd have been reduced to a jelly by this time
if I'd had my way."

He bent with careless good-nature, and patted the miscreant; then turned
towards his horse.

"Poor old Pompey! A shame to keep you standing! All that brute's fault."
He swung himself into the saddle. "By Jove, though, she's got some
pluck!" he said. "I like a woman with pluck!"

He touched his animal with the spur, and in a moment they were speeding
through the gathering dark at a brisk canter. Pompey was as anxious to
get home as was his master, and he needed no second urging. He scarcely
waited to get within the gates of the Park before he gathered himself
together and went like the wind. His rider lay forward in the saddle
and yelled encouragement like a wild Indian. Caesar raced behind them
like a hare.

The mad trio went like a flash past old Marshall the head-keeper who
stood gun on shoulder at the gate of his lodge and looked after them with
stern disapproval.

"Drat the boy! What's he want to ride hell-for-leather like that for?" he
grumbled. "He'll go and kill himself one of these days as his father did
before him."

It was just twenty-five years since Piers' father had been carried dead
into Marshall's cottage, and Marshall had stumped up the long avenue to
bear the news to Sir Beverley. Piers was about the same age now as that
other Piers had been, and Marshall had no mind to take part in a similar
tragedy. It had been a bitter task, that of telling Sir Beverley that his
only son was dead; but to have borne him ill tidings of his grandson
would have been infinitely harder. For Sir Beverley had never loved his
son through the whole of his brief, tempestuous life; but his grandson
was the very core of his existence, as everyone knew, despite his
strenuous efforts to disgui