ch--to get Roger off successfully.

"My hunting boots, Jenkins!" he demanded as he issued from the library.
"And look sharp with them! Flask and sandwich-case--that's right." He
busied himself bestowing these two requisites in his pockets.

Nan, cool and unperturbed; joined him in the hall, a small, amused
smile on her face. She had stayed at Trenby long enough by now to be
well used to the cyclone which habitually accompanied Roger's departure
to the meet, and the boyish unreasonableness of it--seeing that the
well-trained servants invariably had everything in readiness for
him--rather appealed to her. He was like a big, overgrown school-boy
returning to school and greatly concerned as to whether his cricket-bat
and tuck-box were safely included amongst his baggage.

"You, darling?" Roger nodded at her perfunctorily, preoccupied with
the necessities of the moment. "Now, have I got my pipe?"--slapping
his pockets to ascertain. To miss his customary pipe as he trotted
leisurely home after the day's hunting was unthinkable. "Matches!
I've no matches! Here, Morton"--to the butler who was standing by with
Roger's hunting-crop in his hand. "Got any matches?"

Morton produced a box at once. He had been in Roger's service from
boyhood, fought side by side with him in Flanders, and no demand of his
master's had yet found him unprepared. Nan was wont to declare that
had Roger requested the Crown jewels, Morton would have immediately
produced them from his pocket.

Outside, a groom was patiently walking a couple of horses up and down.
Quivering, velvety nostrils snuffed the keen air while gleaming black
hoofs danced gently on the gravel drive, executing little side steps of
excitement--for no hunting day comes round but that in some mysterious
way the unerring instinct of the four-legged hunter acquaints him of
the fact. Further along clustered the pack, the hounds padding
restlessly here and there, but kept within bounds by the occasional
crack of a long-lashed crop or a gruff command from one of the whips.

Nan was always conscious of a curious intermingling of feeling when, as
now, she watched Roger ride away at the head of his hounds. The day
she had almost lost her life at the kennels recurred to her mind
inevitably--those moments of swift and terrible danger when it seemed
as though nothing could save her. And with that memory came
another--the memory of Roger flinging himself forward to the rescue,
for