n extremely
desirable thing that Captain Nugent should know that he was labouring in
his vineyard with the full expectation of a bounteous harvest. He
resolved to call.

Kate Nugent, who heard the gate swing behind him as he entered the front
garden, looked up and stood spellbound at his audacity. As a fairly
courageous young person she was naturally an admirer of boldness in
others, but this seemed sheer recklessness. Moreover, it was
recklessness in which, if she stayed where she was, she would have to
bear a part or be guilty of rudeness, of which she felt incapable. She
took a third course, and, raising her eyebrows at the unnecessarily loud
knocking with which the young man announced his arrival, retreated in
good order into the garden, where her father, in a somewhat heated
condition, was laboriously planting geraniums. She had barely reached
him when Bella, in a state of fearsome glee, came down the garden to tell
the captain of his visitor.

[Illustration: "Bella, in a state of fearsome glee, came down the garden
to tell the captain of his visitor."]

"Who?" said the latter, sharply, as he straightened his aching back.

"Young Mr. Hardy," said Bella, impressively. "I showed 'im in; I didn't
ask 'im to take a chair, but he took one."

"Young Hardy to see me!" said the captain to his daughter, after Bella
had returned to the house. "How dare he come to my house? Infernal
impudence! I won't see him."

"Shall I go in and see him for you?" inquired Kate, with affected
artlessness.

"You stay where you are, miss," said her father. "I won't have him
speak to you; I won't have him look at you. I'll----"

He beat his dirty hands together and strode off towards the house. Jem
Hardy rose from his chair as the captain entered the room and, ignoring a
look of black inquiry, bade him "Good afternoon."

"What do you want?" asked the captain, gruffly, as he stared him straight
in the eye.

"I came to see you about your son's marriage," said the other. "Are you
still desirous of preventing it?"

"I'm sorry you've had the trouble," said the captain, in a voice of
suppressed anger; "and now may I ask you to get out of my house?"

Hardy bowed. "I am sorry I have troubled you," he said, calmly, "but I
have a plan which I think would get your son out of this affair, and, as
a business man, I wanted to make something out of it."

The captain eyed him scornfully, but he was glad to see this
well-looking,