been to maintain in this
particular spot strict privacy from all except Insie, to whom in the
largeness of love he had declared himself. Yet here he stood, promulged
and published, strikingly and flagrantly pronounced! At first he was
like to sulk in the style of a hawk who has failed of his swoop; but
seeing his enemy arising slowly with grunts, and action nodose and
angular--rather than flexibly graceful--contempt became the uppermost
feature of his mind.

"My name," he said, "if you are not afraid of it, that you tie me in
this cowardly low manner, is--Lancelot Yordas Carnaby."

"My boy, it is a long name for any one to carry. No wonder that you look
weak beneath it. And where do you live, young gentleman?"

Amazement sat upon the face of Pet--a genuine astonishment, entirely
pure from wrath. It was wholly beyond his imagination that any one,
after hearing his name, should have to ask him where he lived. He
thought that the question must be put in low mockery, and to answer was
far beneath his dignity.

By this time the veteran Jack of the Smithies had got out of his trap,
and was standing stiffly, passing his hand across his sadly smitten
eyes, and talking to himself about them.

"Two black eyes, at my time of life, as sure as I'm a Christian!
Howsomever, young chap, I likes you better. Never dreamed there was such
good stuff in you. Master Bert, cast him loose, if so please you. Let me
shake hands with 'un, and bear no malice. Bad words deserve hard blows,
and I ask his pardon for driving him into it. I called 'un a milksop,
and he hath proved me a liar. He may be a bad 'un, but with good stuff
in 'un. Lord bless me, I never would have believed the lad could hit so
smartly!"

Pet was well pleased with this tribute to his prowess; but as for
shaking hands with a tenant, and a "common man"--as every one not of
gentle birth was then called--such an act was quite below him, or above
him, according as we take his own opinion, or the truth. And possibly he
rose in Smithies' mind by drawing back from bodily overture.

Mr. Bert looked on with all the bliss of an ancient interpreter. He
could follow out the level of the vein of each, as no one may do except
a gentleman, perhaps, who has turned himself deliberately into a "common
man." Bert had done his utmost toward this end; but the process is
difficult when voluntary.

"I think it is time," he now said, firmly, to the unshackled and
triumphant Pet, "for Lancelo