but really I do not imagine that he will have the responsibility of hindering this little scheme of ours," Colonel Baron replied.

Mrs. Bryce turned herself briskly towards the sofa.

"If I were you, Harriette, I'd refuse to go. Then, at least, you wouldn't have it on your conscience if everything gets into a muddle."

Mrs. Baron's large languid grey eyes opened rather more widely than their wont.

"My dear Harriette, wake up, I entreat of you. Pray listen to me. Doubtless all the world is going to France. Nothing more likely, since half the world consists of idiots, and another half of madmen. That is small reason why you two need comport yourselves like either."

"Do you really suppose there will be war again so soon?" asked Mrs. Baron incredulously.

"Do I suppose? Why, everybody knows it. Jim knows it. Your husband knows it. There can't be any reasonable doubt about the matter. The treaty of Amiens is practically at an end already. Nap has broken his pledges again and again. And this last demand of his—why, nothing could be more iniquitous."

"Dear me; has he made any fresh demand?" Mrs. Baron's eyes went in appeal to her husband, for she had no very great faith in Mrs. Bryce's judgment. The Colonel had no chance of responding.

"Even you can't surely have forgot that, my dear Harriette. He desires that we should give over to his tender mercies the unfortunate Bourbon Princes, who have fled to us for refuge: and no doubt in the end he would demand all the refugees of the Revolution. He might as well demand England herself. And he will demand that, in no long time. 'Tis an open secret that he is already making preparations for the invasion of our country."

"Boney doesn't believe that England, single-handed, will dare to oppose him," remarked Mr. Bryce. "He thinks a nation of seventeen million inhabitants is certain to go down before a nation of forty millions."

"Let him come, and he'll soon learn his mistake," declared Mr. Bryce's valiant better half. "But you, Harriette—with public affairs in this state—you positively intend to let your crazy husband drag you across the Channel?"

"But I do not think my husband crazy, and I wish very much to go," she said, slightly pouting. "I have never been out of England. The wars have always hindered me."

"And you absolutely mean to take the young ones too!"

"We intend to take Roy," the Colonel said, as his wife's eyes once more appealed to him. Children in those days seldom travelled, unless as a matter of necessity; therefore the Colonel's voice was proportionately determined.

"I never heard such a scheme in my life. To take the boy away from his schooling——"

"No; his school has just broken up for some weeks. Several cases of small-pox; so it is considered best. Roy has not been in the way of any who have sickened; therefore he is all right. We mean to have him with us."

"And Molly? Not Molly too?"

"No, not Molly. One will be enough."

Colonel Baron did not wish to betray that he had strenuously opposed the plan, and had given in with reluctance to his wife's entreaties.

"I thought the two never had been parted?"

"That has been folly. It is time such fantasies should be broken through. Roy must go to a boarding-school in the autumn; and this will pave the way."

Mrs. Baron lifted a lace handkerchief to her eyes.

"My dear heart—a school five miles off. You will think nothing of it when the time arrives," urged the Colonel, who till then had gone against his own better judgment, keeping the boy at home and allowing him to attend a day-school. He had won his wife's consent to the boarding-school in the autumn only that morning, by yielding to her wish that Roy should go to Paris. The Colonel's graceful wife was something of a spoilt child in her ways; and resolute as he could show himself in other directions, he seldom had the will to oppose her seriously.

"Indeed, I should say so too," struck in Mrs. Bryce. "You don't desire to turn him into a nincompoop; and between you and Molly, my dear Harriette, he hasn't a chance. School will make a man of him. And what's to become of Molly?"

Mrs. Baron was still gently dabbing her eyes with the square of lace, and the Colonel answered—

"My wife's step-mother wishes to have Molly in Bath for a visit. She will travel thither with Polly early next week."

"Too much gadding about. Not the sort of way I was brought up, nor you either. But everything is turned upside-down in these days. And you've persuaded Captain Ivor to go too?"

"He will go with us to Paris."

"And you're quite content to put yourselves into the clutches of that miserable Boney!"

"My dear madam, the First Consul does not wage war on unoffending travellers. Even supposing that hostilities should break out sooner than may reasonably be expected, we have then but to hasten home."

"Boney doesn't care what he does, so long as he can get his own way."

"He will, at least, act in accordance with the laws of civilised nations."

"Not he! Boney makes his own laws to suit himself."

"Well, well, my dear madam, we view these things differently. And since I have fully made up my mind, all this discussion is a waste of good breath. My wife has never been into France, and I desire that she should go. We may not have another opportunity for many years to come."

"Likely enough—while the Corsican lives!" muttered Mrs. Bryce.

The end window opened upon a kind of verandah, and just outside this window, which had been thrown wide open—for it was an unusually hot spring day—a boy lay flat upon the ground, shaping a small wooden boat with his penknife. At the first mention of his name, a fair curly head popped up and popped down again. A recurrence of the word "Roy" brought up the head a second time, and two wide grey eyes stared eagerly over the low sill into the room. He might have been seen easily enough, but that people were too busy to look that way. Then again the head vanished, and its owner lay motionless, apparently listening for two or three minutes, after which he rolled away to a short distance, jumped up, and scampered off to the schoolroom at the back of the house.

It was a good-sized house, with a nice garden, in the then outskirts of London—a much more limited London than the great metropolis of the present day, though even then Englishmen were wont to describe it as "vast." Where Colonel Baron's house stood, with fields and hedges near at hand, miles of streets now extend in all directions. Trafalgar Square and Regent Street were unbuilt; Pimlico and Moorfields alike consisted mainly of bare rough ground; and the City was still a fashionable place of residence. These facts serve to show how small a London existed in those days.

Roy Baron was a handsome well-set-up lad of about twelve, and he had on a blue cloth jacket, with trousers and waistcoat of the same material. Knickerbockers were unknown. Children and bigger boys wore loose trousers, while tights and uncovered stockings were reserved for grown-up gentlemen. In a few weeks Roy would exchange his cloth waistcoat and trousers for linen ditto, either white or striped. Boys' hair was not cropped so closely in the year 1803 as in the Nineties, and a mass of close little curls grew all over Roy's head.

The year 1803. Think what that means.

Napoleon Buonaparte was alive—not only alive, but in full vigour; and he had entered on his career of conquest, and the world was in terror of his name. Nelson was alive, and five years earlier he had won the great battle of the Nile; two years earlier the great battle of Copenhagen; though his crowning victory of Trafalgar had not yet finally established British supremacy over the ocean. Wellington was alive, but his then name of Sir Arthur Wellesley had not yet become widely famous, and no one could guess that one day he would be the Iron Duke of world-wide celebrity. Sir John