d round the felloe.

"Come soon," said Pepe, "and I will set you in the best way, and then
back to send the Spider on the worst."

And under his soft, dog's eyes Pepe for the first time showed white,
smiling teeth.

"Amigo de grillos," said Dick, in the voice which Pepe knew so well, but
had never before heard unsteady, "she has not slept an hour since I
thought her mind astray."

Then Pepe, fumbling at an inner pocket, spoke swiftly what wisdom was in
him.

"Dicco must get gaiters, rough trousers, and a hat. La senorita must
change the Dutchwoman's skirt for whatever this old dame can furnish.
When I leave you, feed her always, a little at a time. Talk, make love,
make laugh."

"And if the strength fail altogether?" asked Dick, for a moment humble
before this wizened wisdom.

"Better the spur and the whip than the wolves should eat the mare,"
answered Pepe. And he drew a little box from his pocket. "It is the
leaves," he said. "They are not evil like the drugs of shops and cities.
If she flag and is without strength by the way, let her chew a little,
whilst you fill her mind with other thoughts. Then will she endure till
Dicco wins."

Dick turned to Mrs. Brundage, and, to her relief, spoke at last in
English.

"Madam," he said, "the Marquis and his myrmidons must be hoodwinked.
Talking of hoods and winking suggests a sun-bonnet----"

"Silly, old-fashioned things!" said the woman. "But mebbe I have one
that I wore whilst Brundage was courtin'."

"And a plain blouse?" Dick continued. "And perhaps a darker skirt----"

"And hair in a plait down her back," cried the woman, greeting with a
chuckle her first game of make-believe for many a long year; "your
nobleman might pass his daughter twenty times like that, an' never would
'e know 'er."

CHAPTER XVI.

"THE GOAT IN BOOTS."

It was almost noon of Saturday, June the twenty-first, when a party of
three halted in the shade of a few stunted hawthorns by the side of the
sandy, half-made road which leads from Margetstowe village to the
turnpike, which, branching from the main London Road fifteen miles to
the south-west, runs north-eastward through Ecclesthorpe-on-the-Moor to
the sea at the mouth of the great estuary.

From this tree-clump could be seen, facing the junction of the sandy
road with the metalled, the front and the swinging signboard of "The
Goat in Boots." And here, that its two more ordinary-looking members
might shed the oddity which