ed the man proudly. "Ye be the
thief of the French pears, ye be."

"French pears--French--French what?" I cried.

"Ay, ye know full well," said he, "and now ye'll just march."

Seeing now plainly that I was in the hands of one of Lord Westport's
gardeners, who had mistaken me for some garden-thief for whom he had
been on the look-out, I began to expostulate very pointedly. But
always this man stolidly faced me with the yawning mouth of the
blunderbuss.

"And now ye'll march," said he, and despite everything I marched. I
marched myself through the little door in the wall, and into the
gardens of the Earl of Westport. And the infernal weapon was clamped
against the small of my back.

But still my luck came to me even then, like basket falling out of a
blue sky. As, in obedience to my captor's orders, I rounded a bit of
shrubbery, I came face to face with Lady Mary. I stopped so abruptly
that the rim of the on-coming blunderbuss must have printed a fine
pink ring on my back. I lost all intelligence. I could not speak. I
only knew that I stood before the woman I loved, while a man firmly
pressed the muzzle of a deadly firearm between my shoulder-blades. I
flushed with shame, as if I really had been guilty of stealing the
French pears.

Lady Mary's first look upon me was one of pure astonishment. Then she
quickly recognized the quaint threat expressed in the attitude of the
blunderbuss.

"Strammers," she cried, rushing forward, "what would you be doing to
the gentleman?"

"'Tis no gentleman, your la'ship," answered the man confidently. "He
be a low-born thief o' pears, he be."

"Strammers!" she cried again, and wrested the blunderbuss from his
hands. I will confess that my back immediately felt easier.

"And now, sir," she said, turning to me haughtily, "you will please
grant me an explanation of to what my father is indebted for this
visit to his private grounds?"

But she knew; no fool of a gardener and a floundering Irishman could
keep pace with the nimble wits of a real woman. I saw the pink steal
over her face, and she plainly appeared not to care for an answer to
her peremptory question. However, I made a grave reply which did not
involve the main situation.

"Madam may have noticed a certain deluded man with a bell-mouthed
howitzer," said I. "His persuasions were so pointed and emphatic that
I was induced to invade these gardens, wherein I have been so
unfortunate as to disturb a lady's privacy,--a th