tug to his head that brought the tears sharply to his eyes.

"Go off and try to fall in love with a dozen of the prettiest girls you
can find in London, and if you don't succeed in three years, come back
here and we will talk the matter all over again from the beginning."

She was now on the top of the wall. She turned her legs over deftly to
the other side with a swirl of her skirts.

"Good-bye, Louis!" she said, waving a brown hand at him as she slid off
into the wood. "Some day you will be more of a man than I, and then you
will not let a girl put you down."

"Do you know what I think?" cried the boy, exasperated. "I think that
you are a hard-hearted little wretch!"

But only the sound of Patsy's laughter rippled up mockingly from far
down the glade.

CHAPTER XVII

PATSY HELD IN HONOUR

Patsy set out for London with some pomp and circumstance. Quite
unwittingly she had made herself a kind of idol in the countryside. The
tale had been told of how she had run to warn the Bothy of Blairmore,
how she had faced the press-gang that the Glenanmays lads might have
time to escape. She had been carried off and rescued. Men had been shot
and died for her sake. Louis had taken her to Castle Raincy for safety,
and now, girt with a formidable escort, she was setting out to visit
London, where it was reported that she should see the King and be the
guest of royalty itself.

The old Earl had offered his coach for the journey, and early one
September morning he brought Patsy out on his arm, and threw in after
her his own driving-coat, made after the fashion of the Four-in-Hand
Club--the very "Johnny Onslow" model, with fifteen capes, silk-lined and
finished,--lest she should take cold on the way.

"My dear," he said, "fain would I have made you a present of another
sort, but your uncle tells me that you are amply supplied with
pocket-money, and so you take with you an old man's good will, and would
have his blessing, too, if only he thought that of any value!"

Patsy had said good-bye the night before to her Uncle Julian, and had
received from him a netted purse which was even then weighing down her
pretty beaded reticule. Patsy had not thought that there could be so
much money in the world, and she had cried out, "Oh Uncle Ju, is all
this really for me? What in the world shall I ever do with it?"

"You will spend it, my dear," he said smilingly, "that and far more.
London is a great place for running away with