presently, coming to a coppice, the frightened creatures dashed into it, doubtless for covert, where wheel and rein and antler, tangling with trunk and branch, soon brought them to a full stop.

"Good lad!" exclaimed Carew, as Yorke hurried up to help him; "you are a good plucked one, you are; you shall keep the lodge, if you will, instead of that lily-livered scoundrel who was too frightened to move. Oh, I ask pardon; you are a gentleman, are you?"

"Sir, I hope so," answered the young man, stiffly, his anger only half subdued by the necessity for conciliation.

"Then, come up to the house and dine, whoever you are; I'll lend you a red coat. Curse those grooms! what keeps them? One can't sit upon a stag's head to quiet him as though he were a horse." (Two of the stags were down, and butting, at one another with their horns.) "What a pace we came up White Hill! I tried to time them, but I could not get my watch out. You moved yourself like a flash of lightning, else I thought we must have pinned you against the gate. It was well done, my lad, well done; and I'm your debtor."

The Squire held out his hand, for the first time, for Yorke to shake.

"Why, what's this?" said he, peering into the other's eyes. "I have seen your face before, my friend."

"Yes, Sir; a week or two ago I played the part of night-watcher in your preserves—it was a mad prank; but"—and here the young fellow smiled roguishly—"it was better than poaching, you must admit."

"What!" cried the Squire, delighted, "are you the fellow that had that bout with me in the Decoy Pond? Why, I thought you were one of my own men, and sent you something; but, of course, my scoundrels drank it. I'm glad to see you, Sir, by daylight. It was the uncertain moonshine that hampered me, else, by Jove, I'd have given you 'one, two!' We must have it out another day, for a drawn battle is just the thing I hate. What's your name, young gentleman, and where do you live?"

"I live close by, Sir; I am in lodgings for the present."

"Ay, ay, for the hunting, I suppose," said the impetuous Squire. "Hark to those devils of dogs; they are howling yet; they would have had my stags by this time but for you. Well, well; send for your portmanteau, and take up your quarters at Crompton; you shall have a hearty welcome; only don't be late for dinner—seven, Sir, sharp. Here are my knavish grooms at last."

And, under cover of the fire of imprecations which the Squire poured upon his approaching retainers, the young landscape-painter withdrew. He had obtained his end at last, and he wished to retire before Carew should put that question to him for a second time—what is your name?—which, at such a moment, it would, for certain reasons, have been embarrassing to answer.

He betook himself at once to the keeper's lodge, and packing up his wardrobe, which, though of modest dimensions, comprised all that was requisite for a gentleman's costume, dispatched it to the great house. He followed it himself shortly afterward, only waiting to dash off a note by the afternoon's post for town. It was literally a "hurried line," and would have better suited these later telegraphic days, when thoughts, though wire-drawn, are compressed, and brevity is the soul of cheapness, as of wit. "I have got my foot in, and however it may be pinched, will keep the door open. Direct to me at Crompton."

It was not a nice trait in the young man, if it was a characteristic one, that he did not take the trouble even to leave so much word as that for the old keeper, who was engaged in his outdoor duties, but simply inclosed the few shillings in which he was indebted to him inside an envelope, addressed to Walter Grange. The old man liked him, as he well knew, and would have prized a few words of farewell; but Yorke was in a hurry to change his quarters for the better; he had climbed from low to high, and gave no further thought to the ladder which had so far served him. But yet he had some prudence too. Though he had dwelled so long in the Carew domains, so careful had he been not to intrude his presence inopportunely on its master, that he had never so much as seen, except at a distance, the mansion to which he was now an invited guest. How grand it showed, as his elastic step drew near it, with tower and turret standing up against the gloomy November sky, and all its broad-winged front alive with light! How good it would be to call so fine a place his home! How excellent to be made heir to the childless man who ruled it, and who could leave it to whomsoever his whim might choose!

It was unusual for a guest to approach Crompton for the first time on foot. The Squire's jovial friends used for the most part strange conveyances, such as tandems and randoms, and the great flower-beds in the lawn in front gave sign that some such equipage had been lately driven up not altogether with dexterity. It is difficult at all times to drive "unicorn," and more so if the horses are not used to that method of progression, and still more so if the charioteer is somewhat inebriated; and all these conditions had been fulfilled a few minutes previously in the case of Mr. Frederick Chandos, a young gentleman of twenty-one years of age, but of varied experience, who had just arrived that day on his first visit. But when Yorke appeared at the front-door, there was no less attention paid to him than if he had driven up with four-in-hand. Obsequious footmen assisted him to take off his wrappers in the great hall, whose vastness dwarfed the billiard-table in its centre to bagatelle proportions. A profusion of wax-lights—and no others were permitted at Crompton, save in the servants' offices—showed eight shining pillars of rare marble, and a grand staircase broad enough for a coach-and-four, and up which, indeed, Carew had ridden horses for a wager; while all the walls were hung with huge-figured tapestry—"The Tent of Darius" and "The Entry of Alexander into Babylon," both miracles of patient art. The grandeur of the stately place was marred, however, by signs of revel and rough usage. The Persian monarch, spared by his Grecian conqueror, had been deprived, by some more modern barbarian, of his eyes; while the face of his royal consort had been cut out of the threaded picture, to judge by the ragged end of the canvas, by a penknife. The very pillars were notched in places, as though some mad revelers had striven to climb to the pictured ceiling, from which gods and men looked down upon them with amaze; the thick-piled carpet of the stairs was cut and torn, doubtless by horses' hoofs; and here and there a gap in the gilt balusters showed where they had been torn away in brutal frolic. A groom of the chambers preceded the new guest up stairs, and introduced him to a bachelor's apartment, small, but well furnished in the modern style, whither his portmanteau had been already taken. "Squire has given orders, Sir," said he, respectfully, "that he should be informed as soon as you arrived. What name shall I say, Sir? But here he is himself."

As the groom withdrew, Carew made his appearance at the open door. He was smoking a cigar, although it was within an hour of dinner-time; and at his heels slouched a huge bull-dog, who immediately began to growl and sniff at the new guest. "Quiet, you brute!" exclaimed the Squire, with his customary garnish of strong expletive. "Welcome to Crompton, Mr.—I forget your name; or rather you forgot, I think, to favor me with it."

"My name is Richard Yorke, Sir."

"Yorke, Yorke—that sounds easterly. You are of the Cambridgeshire stock, I reckon, are you not?"

"No, Sir," returned the other, with a slight tremor in his voice, which he could not control; "I come from nearer home. Your wife's first husband was called Yorke, if you remember, and I bear his name, although I