do you call them?--calves of an ox, will
come running to us."

"Enough of your foolish talk," said Carne. "The women are as resolute as
the men. Even when we have taken London, not an English woman will come
near us, until all the men have yielded. Go down to your station and
watch for the boat. I expect an important despatch to-night. But I
cannot stay here for the chance of it. I have business in Springhaven."

His business in Springhaven was to turn young love to the basest use, to
make a maiden (rash and flighty, but not as yet dishonourable) a traitor
to her friends and father-land, and most of all to her own father. He
had tried to poison Dolly's mind with doses of social nonsense--in which
he believed about as much as a quack believes in his own pills--but his
main reliance now was placed in his hold upon her romantic heart, and in
her vague ambitions. Pure and faithful love was not to be expected from
his nature; but he had invested in Dolly all the affection he could
spare from self. He had laboured long, and suffered much, and the red
crown of his work was nigh.

Riding slowly down the hill about half a mile from the village, Carne
saw a tall man coming towards him with a firm, deliberate walk. The
stranger was dressed very lightly, and wore a hat that looked like a
tobacco leaf, and carried a long wand in his hand, as if he were going
to keep order in church. These things took the eye afar, but at shorter
range became as nothing, compared with the aspect of the man himself.
This was grand, with its steadfast gaze--no stare, but a calm and kind
regard--its large tranquillity and power of receiving without believing
the words of men; and most of all in the depth of expression reserved by
experience in the forest of its hair.

Carne was about to pass in silent wonder and uneasiness, but the other
gently laid the rod across his breast and stopped him, and then waited
for him to ask the reason why.

"Have you any business with me, good sir?" Carne would have spoken
rudely, but saw that rudeness would leave no mark upon a man like this.
"If so, I must ask you to be quick. And perhaps you will tell me who you
are."

"I think that you are Caryl Carne," said the stranger, not unpleasantly,
but as if it mattered very little who was Caryl Carne, or whether there
was any such existence.

Carne stared fiercely, for he was of touchy temper; but he might as
well have stared at a bucket of water in the hope of derang