Davenant’s heir—at least he will come into his money. The old man is very rich, you know.”

“I see,” she said, musingly; then she looked down at him and added, suddenly: “You were to have been the heir?”

“Yes, that’s right! How did you guess that? Yes, I was the old man’s favorite, but we quarreled. He wanted it all his own way, and, oh—we couldn’t get on. Then Cousin Stephen stepped in, and I am out in the cold now.”

“Then why are you going there now?” she asked.

“Because the squire sent for me,” he replied.

“And you have been all this time going?”

“You see, I thought I’d walk through the forest,” he said, apologetically.

“You should be there now—you should not have waited on the road! Is your Cousin Stephen—is that his name?—there?”

“I don’t know,” he said, carelessly.

“Ah, you should be there,” she said. “Squire Davenant would be friendly with you again.”

“I’m afraid you haven’t hit the right nail on the head there,” he said. “I rather think he wants to give me a good rowing about a scrape I’ve got into.”

“Tell me about that.”

“Oh, it’s about money—the usual thing. I got into a mess, and had to borrow some money of a Jew, and he got me to sign a paper, promising to pay after Squire Davenant’s death; he called it a post obit—I didn’t know what it was then, but I do now; for the squire got to hear of it, but how, hanged if I can make out; and he wrote to me and to the Jew, saying that he shouldn’t leave me a brass farthing. Of course the Jew was wild; but I gave him another sort of bill, and it’s all right.”

“Excepting that you will lose your fortune,” said Una, with a little sigh. “What will you do?”

“That’s a conundrum which I’ve long ago given up. By Jove! I’ll come and be a woodman in the forest!”

“Will you?” she said. “Do you really mean it?—no, you were not in earnest!”

“I—why shouldn’t I be in earnest?” he says, almost to himself. “Would you like me to? I mean shall I come here to—what do you call it—Warden?” and he threw himself down again.

“Yes,” she said; “I should like you to. Yes, that would be very nice. We could sit and talk when your work was done, and I could show you all the prettiest spots, and the places where the starlings make their nests, and the fairy rings in the glades, and you could tell me all that you have seen and done. Yes,” wistfully, “that would be very nice. It is so lonely sometimes!”

“Lonely, is it?” he said. “Lonely! By George, I should think it must be! I can’t realize it! Books, it reads like a book. If I were to tell some of my friends that there was a young lady shut up in a forest, outside of which she had never been, they wouldn’t believe me. By the way—where did you go to school?”

“School? I never went to school.”

“Then how—how did you learn to read? and—it’s awfully rude of me, you know, but you speak so nicely; such grammar, and all that.”

“Do I?” she said, thoughtfully. “I didn’t know that I did. My father taught me.”

“It’s hard to believe,” he said, as if he were giving up a conundrum. “I beg your pardon. I mean that your father would have made a jolly good schoolmaster, and I must be an awful dunce, for I’ve been to Oxford, and I’ll wager I don’t know half what you do, and as to talking—I am not in it.”

“Yes, my father is very clever,” she said; “he is not like the other woodmen and burners.”

“No, if he is, they must be a learned lot,” assented Jack; “yes, I think I had better come and live here, and get him to teach me. I’m afraid he wouldn’t undertake the job.”

“Father does not like strangers,” she said, blushing as she thought of the inhospitable scene of the preceding night. “He says that the world is a cruel, wicked place, and that everybody is unhappy there. But I think he must be wrong. You don’t look unhappy.”

“I am not unhappy now,” said Jack.

“I am so glad,” she said; “why are you not?”

“Because I am with you.”

“Are you?” she said, gently. “Then it must be because I am with you that I feel so happy.”

The Savage flushed and he looked down, striving to still the sudden throb of pleasure with which his heart beat.

“Confound it,” he muttered, “I must go! I can’t be such a cad as to stop any longer; she oughtn’t to say this sort of thing, and yet I—I can’t tell her so! No! I must go!” and he rose and took out his watch.

“I am afraid I must be on the tramp.”

“Yes,” she assented; “you have stayed too long. I hope you will find that the Squire Davenant has forgiven you. I think he cannot help it. And you will have your fortune and will go back into the world, and will quite forget that you lost your way in Warden Forest. But I shall not forget it; I shall often think of it.”

“No,” he said, “I shan’t forget it. But in case I should, will you give me something—no, I won’t ask it.”

“Why not?” she said, wonderingly. “Were you going to say, will I give you something to help you to remember?”