lavoured with
contrition. His wind-up has a sort of laugh behind it:--"Particularly
because I have no business in this part of the Park at all. I can only
remedy that by my absence."

"You will promise me one thing, if you please...."

"Yes--whatever you wish."

"Lead your dog till you are outside the Park. If he is seen he may be
shot. I could not bear that that dog should be shot." Something in the
man's tone and manner has made it safe for the girl to overstep the
boundaries of chance speech to an utter stranger.

He has no right--that he feels--to presume upon this semi-confidence of
an impulsive girl, whoever she is. True, her beauty in that last glory
of the sunset puts resolution to the test. But he _has_ no right, and
there's an end on't! "I will tie Achilles up," he says. "I should not
like him to be shot."

"Oh!--is he Achilles?"

"His mother was Thetis."

"Then, of course, he is Achilles." At this point the boundaries of
strangership seem insistent. After all, this man may be Tom or Dick or
Harry. "You will excuse my speaking to you," says the young lady. "I had
no one to send, and I saw you from the terrace. It was for the dog's
sake."

In his chivalrous determination not to overdraw the blank cheque she has
signed for him unawares, the stranger conceives that a few words of dry
apology will meet the case, and leave him to go on his way. So, though
powerfully ignoring the fact that that outcome will be an unwelcome one,
he replies:--"I quite understand, and I am sincerely grateful for your
caution." He gets at a dog-chain in the pocket of his waterproof
overcoat, and at the click of it Achilles comes to be tied up. As he
fastens the clasp to its collar, he adds:--"I should not have let him
run loose like this, only that I am so sure of him. He is town-bred and
a stranger to the chase. He can collect sheep, owing to his ancestry;
but he never does it now, because he has been forbidden." While he
speaks these last words he is examining something in the dog's leather
collar. "It will hold, I think," says he. "A cut in the strap--it looks
like." Then this oddly befallen colloquy ends and each gives the other a
dry good-evening. The young lady's last sight of that acquaintance of
five minutes shows him endeavouring to persuade the dog not to drag on
his chain. For Achilles, for some dog-reason man will never know, is no
sooner leashed than he makes restraint necessary by pulling against it
with all his