is place she found herself face to face
with a very different person--a young man, of seven or eight and twenty,
perhaps, tall and dark--dark-haired and dark-eyed that is to say--grave
and quiet in appearance, but with a twinkle in his eyes that told of no
lack of humour.

"'I must apologise for calling in this way, Miss Berkeley,' he said at
once, 'but I could not help coming myself to tell how _very_ sorry I am
about the fright my dog gave you last night at the Grange. I have just
heard of it from Mr. Turner.'

"'Your dog?' repeated Mary, raising her pretty blue eyes to his face in
bewilderment.

"'Yes,' he said, 'he ran off to the Grange--his old home, you know--oh, I
beg your pardon! I am forgetting to tell you that I am Walter H----,--in
the night, and must have tried to find his way into my room in the way he
used to do. I always left the door unlatched for him.'

"Instead of replying, Mary turned round and flew straight off into the
room where I was.

"'Oh, Laura,' she exclaimed, 'it _was_ a dog; Mr. Walter H---- has just
come to tell us. Are you not delighted? Now we can fix for the Grange at
once, and it will all be right. Come quick, and hear about it.'

"I jumped up, and, without even waiting to smooth my hair, hurried back
into the sitting-room with Mary. Our visitor, very much amused at our
excitement, explained the whole, and sent downstairs for 'Captain,' a
magnificent retriever, who, on being told to beg our pardon, looked up
with his dear pathetic brown eyes in Mary's face in a way that won her
heart at once. His master, it appeared, had been staying at East Hornham
the last two nights with an old friend, the clergyman there. Both nights,
on going to bed late, he had missed 'Captain,' whose usual habit was to
sleep on a mat at his door. The first night he was afraid the dog was
lost, but to his relief he reappeared again early the next morning; the
second night, also, his master happening to be out late at Mr. Turner's,
with whom he had a good deal of business to settle, the dog had set off
again on his own account to his former quarters, with probably some misty
idea in his doggy brain that it was the proper thing to do.

"'But how did you find out where he had been?' said I.

"'I went out early this morning, feeling rather anxious about 'Captain,''
said our visitor; 'and I met him coming along the road leading from the
Grange. Where he had spent the night after failing to get into his old
hom