the silver floode
Through every channel one might running see"

to the bottom,

Beyond this acreage of desolation is the orchard, protected by crumbling walls, creeping into the famous nut-grove, the uncultured beauty of which the noisome hands of neglect and decay have not touched.

As the nut-grove was in the days of Tristran le Froi, when he established himself on Saxon soil, so it is now—a green-canopied retreat, carpeted with moss and fringed with fern; it is the chosen home of every woodlark, blackbird, thrush, and squirrel of taste in the shire—the nursery, school-room, El Dorado of the five young Lefroys, children of Colonel Robert Lefroy, commonly known as "Robert the Devil" in the days of his reckless youth and unhonored prime, a gentleman who bade his family and his native land goodnight in rather hurried fashion about three years before.

"There goes Bob! I wonder did he get the ferret out of old Rogers?" exclaims Hal, breaking a drowsy silence. "I wish he'd come and tell us."

But the heir of the house of Lefroy, heedless of appealing cry and inviting whistle, stalks homeward steadily, a rank cigarette hanging from his beardless lips, a pair of bull-pups clinging to his heels. He is a tall shapely lad of eighteen, with a handsome gypsy face and eyes like his sister Pauline's—large, dark, full of haughty fire.

"How nasty of him not to come!" grumbles the younger brother. "I wonder what has put his back up? Perhaps old Rogers turned crusty, and wouldn't lend the ferret. Shouldn't wonder, because—"

"The gong, the gong at last!" cries Pauline, springing to her feet. "I didn't know I was so hungry until its welcome music smote my ears. Come along, family."

They need no second bidding. In two minutes the grove is free from their boisterous presence, and they are flying across the lawn, their mongrel but beloved kennel barking, yelping, and scampering enthusiastically around, making the autumn noon hideous.

"What's for dinner?"

"Rabbits!"

"Rabbits! Ye gods—again! Why, this is the fourth day this week that we've fared on their delectable flesh!" cries Robert, striding into the dining-room in grim disgust.

"At this rate we'll soon clear Higgins's warren for him!" chimes in Hal.

"Aunt Jo, let me say grace to-day, will you?"

"Certainly, my dear," Aunt Jo responds, somewhat surprised at the request. She is a mild, sheep faced old gentlewoman, with weary eyes that within the last two years have rained tears almost daily.

Pauline folds her slim sunburnt hands, bows her head, and murmurs reverently—