y on a patch of gravel.

Honoria never spoke. She rose, walked quietly back along the beam,
passed Argemone and Lancelot without seeing them, and firmly but
hurriedly led the way round the pool-side.

Before they arrived at the bank, the colonel had carried Tregarva to
it. Lancelot and two or three workmen, whom his cries had
attracted, lifted the body on to the meadow.

Honoria knelt quietly down on the grass, and watched, silent and
motionless, the dead face, with her wide, awestruck eyes.

'God bless her for a kind soul!' whispered the wan weather-beaten
field drudges, as they crowded round the body.

'Get out of the way, my men!' quoth the colonel. 'Too many cooks
spoil the broth.' And he packed off one here and another there for
necessaries, and commenced trying every restorative means with the
ready coolness of a practised surgeon; while Lancelot, whom he
ordered about like a baby, gulped down a great choking lump of envy,
and then tasted the rich delight of forgetting himself in admiring
obedience to a real superior.

But there Tregarva lay lifeless, with folded hands, and a quiet
satisfied smile, while Honoria watched and watched with parted lips,
unconscious of the presence of every one.

Five minutes!--ten!

'Carry him to the house,' said the colonel, in a despairing tone,
after another attempt.

'He moves!' 'No!' 'He does!' 'He breathes!' 'Look at his
eyelids!'

Slowly his eyes opened.

'Where am I? All gone? Sweet dreams--blessed dreams!'

His eye met Honoria's. One big deep sigh swelled to his lips and
burst. She seemed to recollect herself, rose, passed her arm
through Argemone's, and walked slowly away.

CHAPTER IV: AN 'INGLORIOUS MILTON'

Argemone, sweet prude, thought herself bound to read Honoria a
lecture that night, on her reckless exhibition of feeling; but it
profited little. The most consummate cunning could not have baffled
Argemone's suspicions more completely than her sister's utter
simplicity. She cried just as bitterly about Mops's danger as about
the keeper's, and then laughed heartily at Argemone's solemnity;
till at last, when pushed a little too hard, she broke out into
something very like a passion, and told her sister, bitterly enough,
that 'she was not accustomed to see men drowned every day, and
begged to hear no more about the subject.' Whereat Argemone
prudently held her tongue, knowing that under all Honoria's