ulled with a will.

"I am much obliged to you," the young man remarked stiffly, at the same
time regarding his rescuer with a suspicious and inimical eye, to see if
she were laughing at him.

She did nothing of the kind. Her candid gaze merely expressed dismay,
subtly mingled with commiseration. "I don't see how we're to clean you,"
she said; "only scraping would do it--a trowel's best, but, then, I don't
suppose you've got one about you."

The young man tried to look down his back, always a difficult feat.

"You're simply covered with mud from head to foot," she continued. "The
only thing I can think of for you to do is to come to the stables, and
I'll get Heaven to clean you . . . unless, perhaps," she added,
doubtfully, "you were coming to the house."

"If you will kindly direct me to the village," he said, "I have to pay a
call there, and no doubt my friends will assist me to remove some of this
mud."

"But you can't go calling like that," she expostulated; "you'd far better
come to the stables first. Heaven's so used to us, he'd clean you up in
no time; besides, by far the quickest way to the village is down our
drive. There's no right-of-way through these woods; didn't you see the
boards?"

"Whenever," he spoke with deliberate emphasis, "I see a board to the
effect that trespassers will be prosecuted, I make a point of walking
over that land as a protest."

"Dear me," she said. "It must take you sadly out of your way sometimes.
Where have you come from to-day?"

"From Marlehouse."

"Then you'd have saved yourself at least a mile and a half, and your
trousers all that mud, if you'd stuck to the road; it's ever such a long
way round to come by the woods."

"I prefer the woods."

There was such superior finality in his tone, that the girl was
apparently crushed. She started to walk, he followed; she waited for
him, and they tramped along side by side in silence; he, covertly taking
stock of his companion; she, gazing straight ahead as though for the
moment she had forgotten his existence.

A tall girl, evidently between sixteen and seventeen, for her hair was
not "done up," but tied together at the back with a large bow, whence it
streamed long and thick and wavy to her waist: abundant light brown hair,
with just enough red in it to give it life and warmth.

His appraising eye took in the fact at once that all her clothes were
old, shabby, and exceedingly well cut. Her hat was a shapeless so