give me two an' make a Guy-forx of me that way."

Mr. Hunt mentally visualised cockades the size of albatross wings on each side of his son's hat. The picture made him unable to deny the slightly outré effect that would be produced, and he began to move away.

"Comin' in to see your mother to-night, I suppose?" he asked.

Egbert grunted.

"Tongue still sore?"

"Boilin'," said Egbert, and turning from the gate moved moodily towards the house.

At nine o'clock, following his usual Tuesday night privilege, he betook himself down the village street to his parents' cottage. A further word or two dropped by his mistress joined with kitchen gossip during supper to enable him to supply something of the information for which he found his mother impatiently waiting.

"So you're goin' with 'em, I hear?" she greeted him.

Egbert nodded.

"Think you was goin' to prising, 'stead of to a lord's castle, one would, judgin' by your face," Mrs. Hunt exclaimed.

"Goin' to wear one o' them wing things side of his 'at, that's what he's goin' to wear," announced her husband. "Tall 'at."

"An' oughter be proud," cried Mrs. Hunt. "Hold yer yed up, Sulky, do!"

Sulky gave a stiff jerk to his bullet head. "Not goin' to the 'Ouse o' Lords, after all," he answered his father.

"'Ouse o' Lords! 'Ouse o' nonsense!" Mrs. Hunt exclaimed. "Goin' to live in a castle, that's where you're goin' to live, young man. Down in Wiltsheer; the cook told me all about it when I popped round this afternoon."

"Goin' to wear one o' them wing things side of 'is 'at, that's what he's goin' to wear," pronounced Mr. Hunt doggedly. "Tall 'at. Tall 'at," he reaffirmed; but "In a castle!" Mrs. Hunt continued, heedless of the interruption. "Burdon Old Manor, they call it, at a place called Little Letham, which Letham is the family name of the family, they giving their name to it as is very often the case, and a proper castle it is, too, though called a Manor."

Mrs. Hunt foamed out this information with a heat that increased as she perceived the morose indifference with which Egbert accepted it. Throwing herself into the third person, "Don't you 'ear what your mother is a telling of you, Sulk?" she demanded. Her eye caught on the wall behind Sulk's head a coloured presentation calendar depicting Lambert Simnel at scullion's work in an enormous kitchen, and she took inspiration. "A proper castle, your mother's telling you, where you'll have scullings in the kitchen; that's what you'll 'ave, you nasty sulk, you! Can't you say something?"

"I'll sculling 'em!" breathed Egbert, yielding to her request. He scented in this new form of acquaintance some fresh trial and indignity. "I'll sculling 'em!" he repeated.

His fierce intention earned him at once, and earned him full, the thump upon his head that his mother's excitement and his own gloom had been conspiring to inflict ever since he entered the cottage; and he trudged his way back to Hillside viciously embittered against every point of an aching day: his mistress, her visitors, the approaching change in his life, his mother, the "scullings." "Tyrangs!" said Egbert. He stumbled over a stone as he pronounced the savage word and bit his tongue most painfully. "Boil yer," said Egbert to the stone; and, including the stone with the "tyrangs," as wearily he got him to bed, "Boil um!" he said. "Tyrangs! Toads!"

CHAPTER II

A CHANGE IN THE PEERAGE

This hazard foundation of life! As a stone tossed down a hillside dislodges others and sets them rolling, themselves dislodging more till the first light pitch will gather to a rumble where was peace, the first stone cause to jump and shout many score that might have held their place long after the thrower's idle hand was equal dust with the dust of their descent—so it is with the lightest action that the least of us may idly toss upon our small affairs. We cannot move alone. Life has us in a web, within whose meshes none may stir a hand but he pulls here, loosens there, and sets a wave of movement through a hundred tangles of the coil.

This hazard foundation of life! Egbert Hunt was made to lean wearily over the gate that evening and the toads and "tyrangs" whose oppression had cost him a bitter day were set in his path by a movement in the web, leagues upon leagues of land and sea from Miller's Field. Life has us in a web. In one remote corner an Afridi tribesman shot a British officer: that was his movement in the meshes, and swift, swift, the chain of tugs set up thereby acted upon a morose page-boy in another remote corner, rendering him bone-tired through ushering the visitors come to congratulate those who had stepped into the dead man's shoes.

This hazard touch even in the billet that the Afridi tribesman selected for his bullet! In sheeting rain, behind a rock above a pass on the northwestern frontier of India, Multan Khan—Afridi, one-time sepoy, deserter from his regiment, scoundrel, first-class shot—snuggled his cheek against his stolen rifle, hesitated for a moment between the heads of three British officers, drew a line on one, pressed the trigger; and, while he chuckled over his success, himself pitched dead with a bullet through the incautious skull he had craned over the rock the better to enjoy the fruits of his skill.

Brief his pleasure but lusty the tug he had given the web. The news of it reached London just in time to catch the final edition of the evening papers as they went to press, just in time to supply a good contents-bill for an uncommonly dull night.

PEER
KILLED IN
FRONTIER
FIGHTING

went flaming down the streets, substantiated in the news columns by a brief message announcing Lord Burdon's name among the casualties of a brisk little engagement in the Frontier Campaign.

The morning papers did better with it, particularly that which Egbert Hunt took in from the doorstep of Hillside. This paper's "Own Correspondent" with the British force, eluding vigilance, had enjoyed the fortune of getting among the party detailed for clearing the rocks whence Multan Khan and his friends had made themselves surprisingly unpleasant; and his long despatch, well handled in Fleet Street, bravely headlined above:

Gallant Young Peer
Lord Burdon Killed in Sharp Frontier Engagement
Leads Dashing Charge

and nicely rounded off below with a paragraph written up from "cuttings about Lord Burdon" in the newspaper's library, was distributed far and wide on the morrow. The journalists dished it up, the presses hammered it out, the carts, the trains, and the boys galloped it broadcast over the country. To some it fetched tragedy (as we shall see); to others idle interest; to Egbert Hunt a bone-aching day and cruel indignities (as have been shown); to Mrs. Letham bewildering excitement.

CHAPTER III

INTO THE PEERAGE

I

It made Mrs. Letham very excited. Mrs. Letham, coming upon it as she idly turned over the newspaper at her breakfast, took a bang at the heart that for the moment made the print difficult to read. Recovering, she read it through, her pulses drumming, her breath catching, her hands shaking so that the paper rustled a little between them. She half rose from her seat, then read again. She read a third time and now pursued the lines to that subjoined paragraph written up from the "cuttings about Lord Burdon."

"Lord Burdon, the twelfth Baron, was attached to the staff of General Sir Wryford Sheringham, commanding the expeditionary force. He was a lieutenant in the 30th Hussars and left England in October last with General Sheringham when the latter went out to take command. Lord Burdon, who only attained his majority in April last, was unmarried. This is the first time since the creation of the Barony in 1660 that