sternly:

"Mary, who on earth was that man you were with? Where did you pick him up?"

Mary laughed. "I literally picked him up from the very wettest part of the wood, where all the firs are, you know. He was sitting mournfully in a young pond, apparently quite incapable of getting up by himself, and very much afraid of Parker, who was barking furiously."

"Showed his sense; but what was that chap doing there, and who is he?"

"He was trespassing, of course; makes a point of it, he says, but he'd evidently lost his way, so I put him right. I thought if he and the pater met there'd be words. He isn't at all a meek young man, and talks like that Course of Reading Miss Glover loves so."

"If he talked so much, he must have told you something about himself."

"Not much; his name is E. A. Gallup, and he was going to pay a call in
Redmarley."

"What's he like? I only saw his back, and deucedly disreputable it was.
He looked as if he had been rolling drunk."

Mary laughed again. "I shouldn't think he ever got drunk," she said; "he's far too solemn. In appearance, he's rather like a very respectable young milkman, fresh-coloured, you know, and sort of blunt everywhere, but he speaks—if you can imagine a cross between a very superior curate and the pater—that's what he speaks like, except that there's just an echo of an accent—not bad, you know, but there."

Grantly took the pipe out of his mouth and pulled the lobe of his ear meditatively.

"Gallup," he repeated. "Gallup, I've heard something about that name quite lately. Surely, if you walked with him right from the Forty Firs and talked all the time, you must have found out something more?"

"He's going to make a speech at Marlehouse to-morrow night; he was spouting away like anything just before he fell down. That's what made Parker bark so."

"I've got it," cried Grantly. "He's the Liberal candidate, that's what he is. He's standing against poor old Brooke of Medenham, and they say he'll get in, too—young brute."

"Is he a Labour member?"

"No, Liberal, they couldn't run a Labour member at Marlehouse; not enough cash in the constituency . . . tell you who he is, son of old Gallup that kept the ready-made clothes shop in the market-place—'Golden Anchor' or something, they called it. Mother used to buy suits there for the kids in the village for Easter, jolly decent suits they were, too."

"And does he keep on the 'Golden Anchor'?"

"I don't think so, but I don't know. Jolly good cheek marching through our woods, as if they belonged to him. Wish I'd met him."

"My dear chap, we're the last people in the world who can say anything to people for marching through other people's property, you especially. Why, nine-tenths of the bad rows, ever since any of us could walk, have been about that sort of thing."

"Good old Mary, that Radical chap's converted you. What else did he say?
Come on; get it off your chest."

At that moment, the door was opened by an elderly man-servant, who announced: "The master wishes to speak to you, Miss Mary."

"Oh, Botticelli! Cimabue! Burne Jones!" Mary ejaculated. "The pater must have been looking out of the window, too. What bad luck."

"I wouldn't mention having touched the chap in your interview with the pater," Grantly called after her.

As Eloquent neared the Manor gates—those great gates famous throughout the country for the gryphons on their posts and their wonderful fairy-like iron tracery—a little boy came out from amongst the tall chestnuts in the avenue. His face was dirty and his sailor-suit much the worse for wear, but his outstanding, high-bridged little nose and broad, confident smile proclaimed him one of the family. He stood right in the stranger's path, exclaiming:

"Hullo! had a scrap with the keeper?"

His tone proclaimed a purely friendly curiosity. "Certainly not,"
Eloquent answered, coldly. "I had the misfortune to slip and fall."

"Why ever didn't they clean you up a bit at the house?" the little boy asked.

"Your sister was kind enough to suggest it——"

"Which sister?"

"Miss——" he hardly liked to say "M. B.," and paused.

"Big or little? There's only two."

"Rather big, I should say."

"Oh, that's Mary—did she bump into you?"

Eloquent looked hopelessly puzzled, and the boy hastened to add:

"She's a bit of a gawk, you know, and awfully strong. I thought she might have charged into you and knocked you over . . . she wouldn't mean to do it . . ."

"I must be going," said Eloquent, "good-evening," and he hastened on his way.

"Sorry you couldn't stop to tea," the small boy called after him hospitably. "I'm Ger, so you'll know me again when you see me."

The child stood for a minute looking after the stranger in the hope that he would turn his head, and nod or wave to him in friendly farewell, but he did neither. Ger gave a little sigh, and trotted up the drive towards home.

Outside the gates Eloquent paused and looked back at them. Brought from Verona generations ago, they were a perfect example of a perfect period. Richly decorative, various in design, light and flowing in form, the delicate curves broke into actual leafage, sweeping and free as nature's own. The Ffolliots were proud of their gates.

He gazed at them admiringly, and then, like Ger, he sighed.

"Why," he muttered, "why should they have had all this always? I wonder if it's the constant passing through gates like this that helps to make them what they are."

CHAPTER IV

REFLECTION AND ENLIGHTENMENT

Eloquent found that M. B. Ffolliot had not deceived him as to the nearness of the village. A few yards to the left, over the bridge, and the long, irregular street lay in front of him; the river on one side; the houses, various in size and shape, but alike in one respect, that the most modern of them was over two hundred years old. He knew that his aunt's house was at the very end of the street and furthest from the bridge, and that Redmarley village was nearly a mile in length. Yet he did not hurry. He walked very slowly in the middle of the muddy road, resolved to marshal and tabulate his impressions as was his orderly wont.

But in this instance his impressions refused to conform to either process, and remained mutinously chaotic.

He found that, in thinking of Mary, he unconsciously called her "that girl," whereas such maidens as he hitherto had encountered were always "young ladies." He didn't know many "young ladies," but those he did know he there and then called into review and compared with Mary Ffolliot.

They were all of them much better dressed, he was certain of that. But he was equally assured that not one of them would have forborne to laugh at his plight, as he sat abject and ridiculous in the very largest puddle in Redmarley woods.

She had not laughed.

And would any one of these well-dressed young ladies (Eloquent took into account that it was Sunday) have held out helping hands to a total stranger with such absolute simplicity, so entirely as a matter of course? not as a young woman to a young man, but as one fellow-creature to another who had, literally,