him with her eye. "She ain't mad at you, is she, Will?"

"I don't know what you mean, Mary." He glared hatefully at her and
strode away.

Stanley saw him going through the fields and leaped a fence jubilantly
in pursuit. In a wood the light sifted through the foliage and burned
with a peculiar reddish lustre on the masses of dead leaves. He frowned
at it for a while from different points. Presently he erected his easel
and began to paint. After a a time he threw down his brush and swore.
Stanley, who had been solemnly staring at the scene as if he too was
sketching it, looked up in surprise.

In wandering aimlessly through the fields and the forest Hawker once
found himself near the road to Hemlock Inn. He shied away from it
quickly as if it were a great snake.

While most of the family were at supper, Mary, the younger sister, came
charging breathlessly into the kitchen. "Ma--sister," she cried, "I know
why--why Will didn't go to the inn to-day. There's another fellow come.
Another fellow."

"Who? Where? What do you mean?" exclaimed her mother and her sister.

"Why, another fellow up at the inn," she shouted, triumphant in her
information. "Another fellow come up on the stage this morning. And she
went out driving with him this afternoon."

"Well," exclaimed her mother and her sister.

"Yep. And he's an awful good-looking fellow, too. And she--oh, my--she
looked as if she thought the world and all of him."

"Well," exclaimed her mother and her sister again.

"Sho!" said the old man. "You wimen leave William alone and quit your
gabbling."

The three women made a combined assault upon him. "Well, we ain't
a-hurting him, are we, pa? You needn't be so snifty. I guess we ain't
a-hurting him much."

"Well," said the old man. And to this argument he added, "Sho!"

They kept him out of the subsequent consultations.

CHAPTER XII.

The next day, as little Roger was going toward the tennis court, a large
orange and white setter ran effusively from around the corner of the inn
and greeted him. Miss Fanhall, the Worcester girls, Hollanden, and
Oglethorpe faced to the front like soldiers. Hollanden cried, "Why,
Billie Hawker must be coming!" Hawker at that moment appeared, coming
toward them with a smile which was not overconfident.

Little Roger went off to perform some festivities of his own on the
brown carpet under a clump of pines. The dog, to join him, felt obliged
to circle widely about the tennis