too!"

"Grace!" said Claude: "and is she with you?"

"With the old man, the angel! tending him night and day."

"And as beautiful as ever?"

"Sir!" said Mark solemnly, "when any one's soul is as beautiful as
hers is, one never thinks about her face."

"Who is Grace?" asked Stangrave.

"A saint and a heroine!" said Claude. "You shall know all; for you
ought to know. But you have no news of Tom; and I have none either. I
am losing all hope now."

"I'm not, sir!" said Mark fiercely. "Sir, that boy's not dead; he
can't be. He has more lives than a cat, and if you know anything of
him, you ought to know that."

"I have good reason to know it, none more: but--"

"But, sir! But what? Harm come to him, sir? The Lord wouldn't harm him
for his father's sake; and as for the devil!--I tell you, sir, if he
tried to fly away with him, he'd have to drop him before he'd gone a
mile!" And Mark began blowing his nose violently, and getting so red
that he seemed on the point of going into a fit.

"Tell you what it is, gentlemen," said he at last, "you come and stay
with me, and see his father. It will comfort the old man--and--and
comfort me too; for I get down-hearted about him at times."

"Strange attraction there was about that man," says Stangrave, _sotto
voce_ to Claude.

"He was like a son to him--"

"Now, gentlemen. Mr. Mellot, you don't hunt?"

"No, thank you," said Claude.

"Mr. Stangrave does, I'll warrant."

"I have at various times, both in England and in Virginia."

"Ah! Do they keep up the real sport there, eh? Well that's the best
thing I've heard of them, sir!--My horses are yours!--A friend of that
boy, sir, is welcome to lame the whole lot, and I won't grumble. Three
days a week, sir. Breakfast at eight, dinner at 5.30--none of your
late London hours for me, sir; and after it the best bottle of port,
though I say it, short of my friend S----'s, at Reading."

"You must accept," whispered Claude, "or he will be angry."

So Stangrave accepted; and all the more readily because he wanted to
hear from the good banker many things about the lost Tom Thurnall.

* * * * *

"Here we are," cries Mark. "Now, you must excuse me: see to
yourselves. I see to the puppies. Dinner at 5.30, mind! Come along,
Goodman, boy!"

"Is this Whitbury?" asks Stangrave.

It was Whitbury, indeed. Pleasant old town, which slopes down the
hill-side to the old church,--just "restored," though b