after Tom to-morrow. Now, he has in most ways a good deal more sense than you——"

"I can believe it," said Ingleby. "It really isn't very astonishing."

"Still, you are stronger than he is, and he hasn't been very well since he took up the night work at the mill. If there should be any trouble you will look after him?"

Ingleby promised; and, hearing her brother reascending the stairway, the girl swiftly flitted out of the room, while Ingleby sat down to consider, with the warmth still in his face, for he was not quite pleased with himself, and, as a natural result, a trifle vexed with Hetty. It was true, he admitted, that the girl had made a somewhat enticing picture as she stood with face partly turned from him and one hand raised to her head; but it was, he decided, merely the brotherly kindness he had always felt for her which had prompted his offer, and it was unpleasant to feel that he had done anything that might hurt her self-respect. Still, he could not understand why this should be so, since she had undoubtedly permitted him to put the hat on and admire her in it not so very long ago, and he failed to discover any reason why she should, in the meanwhile, have grown stricter in her views as to what was fitting. Nor could he understand her question, which suggested that she considered herself entitled to at least as much deference as a person she preferred not to name.

Then, remembering that most young women were subject to unaccountable fancies now and then, he dismissed the matter as of no importance, after all, and once more busied himself with the American's speeches. They were certainly stirring, and made the more impression because he was unacquainted with Western hyperbole; but there was in them, as wiser men had admitted, the ring of genuine feeling, as well as a logical vindication of democratic aspirations. Ingleby was young, and his blood warmed as he read; while Hetty Leger, as she walked home through the hot streets of the still noisy town with her brother, was for once curiously silent, and almost morose, though, considering the life she led, she was usually a cheerful girl.

It was not much quieter on the following afternoon when Ingleby, who, partly as a protest against the decrees of conventionality, wore a soft cap and his one suit of light summer tweed, met Leger on the doorstep of the Committee rooms of a certain Society. Several big wagonettes were already drawn up, and men with pallid faces sat in them, neatly attired for the most part, though somewhat to Ingleby's annoyance several of them smoked clay pipes and wore brilliant neckties and hard felt hats. He was quite aware that it was unreasonable of him to object to this, but, nevertheless, he could not help it. They were, however, quiet and orderly enough, and indulged in no more than good-humoured badinage with the crowd that had assembled to see them off; but Ingleby felt inclined to protest when Leger led him to a place on the box-seat of the foremost vehicle, where a man was scattering leaflets among the crowd.

"Couldn't we sit anywhere else?" he asked. "It's a little conspicuous here."

Leger shook his head. "That can't be helped," he said. "It's the penalty of making speeches. You are considered one of the stalwarts now. There's no use in objecting to the result when you have been guilty of the cause, you know."

"I'll be especially careful another time," said Ingleby, with a little grimace. "In the meanwhile I'm ready to do anything you can reasonably expect of me."

Then there was a cracking of whips and a rattle of wheels, and the discordant notes of a cornet broke through the semi-ironical cheer; and, as they rolled across the river, which, foul with the refuse of tanneries and dye-works, crept out of the close-packed town, a man who sat on the bridge waved his hat to the leading driver.

"Take them straight to the lock-up, Jim," he said. "It will save everybody trouble, and what's the use of going round?"

Then they wound through dusky woods out of the hot valley, and down the long white road across a sun-baked moor, where the dust whirled behind them in a rolling cloud. However, the men in the foremost vehicle got little of it, and Ingleby felt that the drive would have been pleasant in different circumstances, as he watched the blue hills that rose in the dazzling distance, blurred with heat. Only one white fleecy cloud flecked the sweep of cerulean, and the empty moor lay still under the drowsy silence of the Sunday afternoon. It seemed to him most unfitting that the harsh voices of his companions, the clatter of hoofs, and the doleful tooting of the cornet, should jar upon it. Then as they dipped into a hollow they came upon other travellers, all heading in the same direction, who hurled somewhat pointed jests at them as they passed; but these did not exactly resemble the men in the wagonettes. Their attire was by no means neat, and they had not in the least the appearance of men about to discharge a duty, while several of them carried heavy sticks.

"I wonder what they mean to do with those bludgeons," said Ingleby a trifle uneasily.

Leger laughed. "I have no doubt they would come in handy for killing pheasants. There are, I believe, a good many young ones down in the Dene. Of course, the Committee could very well dispense with the company of those fellows, but we can't prevent any man from asserting his rights as a Briton."

"That," said Ingleby, grimly, "is in one respect almost a pity. The difficulty is that somebody will get the credit of our friends' doings."

"Of course!" and Leger laughed again. "You can't be a reformer for nothing; you have to take the rough with the smooth—though there is, as a rule, very little of the latter."

Ingleby said nothing further; but it dawned on him, as it had, indeed, done once or twice before, that even a defective system of preserving peace and order might be preferable to none at all. Still, he naturally would not admit his misgivings, and said nothing until the wagonettes rolled into a little white village gay with flowers and girt about by towering beeches. The windows of an old grey house caught the sunlight and flashed among the trees, and, as the vehicles drew up, a trim groom on a splendid horse swept out through the gate of a clematis-covered lodge.

Then there was a hoarse cheer from a group of dilapidated and dusty loungers as the men swung themselves down outside the black-beamed hostelry which bore a coat-of-arms above its portal. They were unusually quiet, and Leger, who glanced at them, touched Ingleby's shoulder.

"They'll do their work," he said. "Still, I fancy we are expected, and I'm not sure that I'd be sorry if we had the thing done, and were driving home again."

III
CONFLICTING CLAIMS

The sunlight beat down fiercely on the shaven grass, and a drowsy hum of bees stole through the stillness of the Sunday afternoon when Grace Coulthurst and Geoffrey Esmond strolled across the lawn at Holtcar Grange. There were at least two acres of it, flanked by dusky firs and relieved on two sides by patches of graduated colour, while on the third side one looked out towards the blue hills across the deep hollow of Willow Dene into which the beech woods rolled down. A low wall, along which great urns of scarlet geraniums were set, cut off the lawn from the edge of the descent, and Grace, seating herself on the broad coping, glanced down into the cool shadow, out of which the sound of running water came up.

"It really looks very enticing on a day like this. Don't you think it is a little hard on the Hoddam people to shut them out of it?" she said.

Her companion, who leaned, with his straw hat tilted back,