footsteps sounded clearly on the stony road.

Then he turned the corner, and she lifted one glance of superb disdain which melted suddenly under a terror-stricken pity. For this hero was worse battered than Number One had been, and one of those eyes, which had used to be so expressive and eloquent, was decorated by a shade.

'Oh, Lane!' cried the girl, clasping her hands, and turning white with pity.

'Did I frighten you, my dear?' said Lane. 'It's nothing. It'll all be right in a day or two.'

'I hope so,' she answered, recovering herself, and seizing on principle before it made away for ever. 'I wish you to know that I think you have behaved very disgracefully, and I hope you will never speak to me again.'

'Why,' said Lane, 'that's hard measure, Bertha; and as for behaving disgracefully—if a man threatens to punch your head you must give him the chance to punch it. That's man's law, anyhow, whether it's woman's or not.'

'I am sure Mr. Thistlewood is no quarreller,' said Bertha, with great dignity and severity of demeanour. 'It takes no great penetration to guess who began it.'

'There's one thing I will say for him,' returned Lane; 'he's a truth-telling fellow, to the best of my belief. Ask him who began it. He'll tell you. Not that I should take any particular blame or shame for having begun it myself, but since that's how you look at it, dear—why, I should like you to be satisfied.'

'Do you think, Mr. Protheroe,' demanded Bertha, 'that it's the way to win a girl's esteem to brawl about her in public on a Sunday?'

'That's what Thistlewood said,' Lane answered, with cunning simplicity. '"It's unbecoming," said he, "in a man to brawl over the maid he wants to marry."'

'I was certain he would say so, and think so,' returned Bertha, with a sinking of the heart. She wanted grounds for pardoning Lane.

'Well,' said Lane, with a retrospective air, 'we talked for a while, and he was good enough to promise me a hiding if I didn't keep out of his way—meaning, of course, at your father's house. I didn't seem to take it quite so meekly as he thought I ought to, and by and by says he, "You seem to be in a hurry for that hiding." So I just made answer that hurry was no word for it, and then, the pair of us being keen set, we got to it. The day was an accident, and I daresay a piece of forgetfulness on both our sides. But you see, my dear, a man's just as bound to guard his self-respect on a Sunday as on a week-day.'

'I have been very deeply wounded,' said Bertha. 'I wished to respect you both, and now I can respect neither of you. Good-morning, Mr. Protheroe.'

Mr. Protheroe stood discomfited, and looked mournfully after her as she walked away. When she had disappeared round the bend of the road he sat down upon the bank and plucked grasses with mechanical fingers, turning the thing up and down in his mind for an hour or thereabouts. Suddenly he jumped to his feet and resumed his walk, smiling with head erect, and that mellow whistle of his rose on the air with jollity in every note of it, for it had broken upon his mind like sunshine to remember her first exclamation on seeing him. He was a young man who was in the habit of making sure of things, and he had never in his life been surer of anything than he felt about this. The name, the tone, the look, meant more than a common interest in him. She had called him 'Lane' for the first time in his life. She had clasped her hands, and turned pale at the sight of him. All this meant victory for his dearest hopes, and so he leapt to his feet, and marched off whistling like the throstle.