from those black people which she had about her since her birth.

I had great ado to move, though my shoulder was not disjointed, only sorely bruised, but finally I was on my feet again, though standing rather weakly, and with an ear alert for the return of that wild, careering brute, and the little maid was close at my side, with one rosy set of fingers clinging around two of my rough brown ones with that sweet tenacity of a baby grasp which can hold the strongest thing on earth.

And she kept on jabbering with that slow murmur of sweetness, and I stood looking down at her, catching my breath with the pain in my shoulder, though it was out of my thoughts with this new love of her, and then came my father, Col. John Chelmsford, and Capt. Geoffry Cavendish, walking through the park in deep converse, and came upon us, and stopped and stared, as well they might.

Capt. Geoffry Cavendish was a gaunt man with the hectic colour of a fever, which he had caught in the new country, still in the hollows of his cheeks. He was quite young, with sudden alertnesses of glances in bright black eyes like the new colours in jewels when the light shifts. His daughter has the same, though her eyes are blue. Moreover, through having been in the royal navy before he got a wound which incapacitated him from further service, and was indeed in time the cause of his death, he had acquired a swift suppleness of silent movement, which his daughter has inherited also.

When he came upon us he stared for but one second, then came that black flash into his eyes, and out curved an arm, and the little maid was on her father's shoulder, and he was questioning me with something of mistrust. I was a gentleman born and bred, but my clothes sat but roughly and indifferently on me, partly through lack of oversight and partly from that rude tumble I had gotten. Indeed, my breeches and my coat were something torn by it. Then, too, I had doubtless a look of ghastliness and astonishment that might well have awaked suspicion, and Capt. Geoffry Cavendish had never spoken with me in the short time since his return. "Who may you be?" he asked, and his voice hesitated between hostility and friendliness, and my stepfather answered for me with a slight forward thrust of his shoulders which might have indicated shame, or impatience, or both. "'Tis Master Harry Maria Wingfield," answered he; then in the same breath, "How came you here, sir?"

I answered, seeing no reason why I should not, though I felt my voice shake, being still unsteady with the pain, and told the truth, that I had come thither to see if, perchance, I could get a glimpse of some of the black folk. At that Captain Cavendish laughed good-humouredly, being used to the excitement his black troop caused and amused at it, and called out merrily that I was about to be gratified, and indeed at that moment came running, with fat lunges, as it were, of tremulous speed, a great black woman in pursuit of the little maid, and heaved her high to her dark wave of bosom with hoarse chuckles and cooings of love and delight and white rollings of terrified eyes at her master if, perchance, he might be wroth at her carelessness.

He only laughed, and brushed his dark beard against the tender roses of the little maid as he gave her up, but my stepfather, who, though not ill-natured, often conceived the necessity of ill-nature, was not so easily satisfied. He stood looking sternly at my white face and my weak yielding of body at the bend of the knees, and suddenly he caught me heavily by my bruised shoulder. "What means all this, sirrah?" he cried out, but then I sank away before him, for the pain was greater than I could bear.

When I came to myself my waistcoat was off, and both men looking at my shoulder, which the horse's hoof must have barely grazed, though no more, or I should have been in a worse plight. Still the shoulder was a sorry sight enough, and the great black woman with the little fair baby in her arms stood aloof looking at it with ready tears, and the baby herself made round eyes like stars, though she knew not half what it meant. I felt the hot red of shame go over me at my weakness at a little pain, after the first shock was over, and I presumably steeled to bear it like a man, and I struggled to my feet, pulling my waistcoat together and looking, I will venture, much like a sulky and ill-conditioned lad.

"What means that hurt on your shoulder, Harry?" asked my stepfather, Col. John Chelmsford, and his voice was kind enough then. "I would not have laid such a heavy hand on thy shoulder had I known of it," he added. My stepfather had never aught against me that I wot of, having simply naught for me, and a man cannot in justice be held to account for the limitations of his affections, especially toward a rival's son. He spoke with all kindness, and his great ruddy face had a heavy gleam of pity for my hurt, but I answered not one word. "How came it so, Harry?" he asked again with growing wonder at my silence, but I would not reply.

Then Captain Cavendish also addressed me. "You need have no fear, however you came by the hurt, my lad," he said, and I verily believe he thought I had somehow caught the hurt while poaching on his preserves. I stood before them quite still, with my knees stiff enough now, and I think the colour came back in my face by reason of the resistance of my spirit.

"Harry, how got you that wound on your shoulder? Answer me, sir," said Colonel Chelmsford, his voice gathering wrath anew. But I remained silent. I do not, to this day, know why, except that to tell of any service rendered has always seemed to me to attaint the honour of the teller, and how much more when it was a service toward that little maid! So I kept my silence.

Then my stepfather's face blazed high, and his mouth straightened and widened, and his grasp tightened on a riding-whip which he carried, for he had left his horse grazing a few yards away. "How came you by it, sir?" he demanded, and his voice was thick. Then, when I would not reply, he raised the whip, and swung it over my shoulders, but I caught it with my sound arm ere it fell, and at the same time the little maid, Mary Cavendish, set up a piteous wail of fear in her nurse's arms.

"I pray you, sir, do not frighten her," I said, "but wait till she be gone." And then I waved the black woman to carry her away, and with my lame arm. When she had fled with the child's soft wail floating back, I turned to my stepfather, Col. John Chelmsford, and he, holding fiercely to the whip which I relinquished, still eyed me with doubt.

"Harry, why will you not tell?" he said, but I shook my head, waiting for him to strike, for I was but a boy, and it had been so before, and perhaps more justly.

"Let the lad go, Chelmsford," cried Captain Cavendish. "I'll warrant he has done no harm." But my stepfather would not heed him.

"Answer me, Harry," said he. Then, when I would not, down came the riding-whip, but only thrice, and not hard. "Now go you home," said my stepfather, "and show your mother the hurt, however you came by it, and have her put some of the cooling lotion on a linen cloth to it." Then he and Captain Cavendish went their ways, and I went toward home, creeping through the gap in the May hedge. But I did not go far, having no mind to show my hurt, though I knew well that my mother, being a woman and soft toward all wounds, would make much of it, and maybe of me on its account. But I was not of a mind to purchase affection by complaints of bodily ills, so I lay down under the hedge in the soft grass, keeping my bruised shoulder uppermost, and remained there thinking of the little maid, till finally the pain easing somewhat, I fell asleep, and was presently awakened by a soft touch on my sore shoulder, which caused me to wince and start up with wide eyes, and there was Catherine