iversion," I said, in excuse for the rashness of my
act.

"Well, I can take you for a pull now. I'll be here for a few weeks.
Will you come to-morrow afternoon? Would three o'clock suit you?" he
inquired as he moored. "The scenery is magnificent farther up the
river."

"Yes, if I'm not here at three o'clock you'll know that I'm not able
to come. You are very good, Ernest, to waste time with me."

"I'm only too proud to be able to row you about and expend a little
despised brute force in returning all the entertainment with brains in
it you have given me in the past."

"Yes, at the cost of anything under 7s. 6d. an evening,--am I to pay
you that for rowing me?"

"Put it in the hospital-box," he said with a laugh that displayed his
strong white teeth between his firm bold lips. He was altogether a
sight that was more than good in my eyes.

I found I was not strong enough to spring ashore, but young Breslaw
managed that and my transit up the steep bank to the house with an
ease and gentleness so dear to woman's heart, that the strength to
accomplish it is the secret of an athlete being in ninety per cent of
cases a woman's ideal.

"Oh, I say," as he was leaving me at the gate, "if you mention me,
speak of me as R. Ernest, as I've dropped the Breslaw where I'm
staying. I don't want wind of my being here to get into the papers.
I'm practising in the dark, as I'd like to give some of the cracks a
surprise licking."

"Very well, I'm under an alias too, so please don't forget. To all
except a few theatre patrons I'm as dead as ditch-water; but some one
might recognise the old name, and it would be very unpleasant."

"Right O! To-morrow at three, then, I'll give you a pull," he said,
doffing his cap from his heavy ruddy locks, now drying into waves and
gleaming a rival hue in the setting sun, as he bounded down the bank
and made his way along the river-edge to the bridge, as his place of
sojourn was farther up than Clay's and on the other side.

The excitement of thus meeting him had somewhat revived me, for here
at once, as though in response to my wish, was a fitting knight to
play a leading _role_ with my young lady, the desire for whose
wellbeing had taken grip of me. For her sweet sake, and the sake of
the fragrant manliness of the stalwart and deserving knight, I
straightway resolved to enter the thankless and precarious business of
matchmaking, one in which I had not had one iota of experience; but as
women