ck, saw her, and told the
other, who wheeled round sharply, frowning a little.

"'Ere, please sir, I wants to see yer," she gasped, out of breath,
choking a little with unwonted exertion. Christopher went back to her
and waited gravely. She opened her hand and the half-sovereign glinted
again in the light.

"Expect yer made a mistake, didn't yer, sir?" she asked in a hoarse
whisper, and saw a wave of hot colour under his brown skin.

"No," he said awkwardly, "I hadn't anything else. It was good of you
to trouble to come though. Go and get some new boots and a good
supper. It's bad going on the roads in autumn. I _know_, I've done
it."

She gasped at him bewildered, her hand still open.

"Yer a gentleman, yer are,"--her tone hesitated as it were between the
statement of a plain fact and doubt of his last words.

"Winchester is three miles on. You can get decent lodgings out by the
Station Road to the left as you go under the arch. Good-bye." He
raised his hat again and turned away. The woman looked after him, gave
a prolonged sniff and limped back up the hill.

Max looked at Christopher out of the corner of his eye, a little
doubtfully. He had not come near, fastidiousness outweighing
curiosity.

"What did she want--and why did you take your hat off?"

Christopher grew hot again.

"Oh, she's a woman, and my mother and I tramped, you know."

Max did not know, and intimated that Christopher was talking rot.

Christopher decapitated a thistle and explained briefly, "Caesar
adopted me straight out of a workhouse. My mother and I were tramping
from London to Southampton, and she got ill at Whitmansworth, the
other side of Winchester, and died there. The Union kept me till Mr.
Aston took me away. I thought everyone knew."

Embarrassment and curiosity struggled for the mastery in the young
aristocrat by his side.

"And you really did tramp?" he ventured at length.

"Yes, for a time, but we were not like that. My mother was--was a
lady, educated, and all that, I think, only quite poor. She understood
poor people and tramps. We used to walk with them, talk to them. They
were kind."

"And if Caesar hadn't adopted you?"

"I should be a workhouse porter by now, perhaps," laughed Christopher
lightly and then was silent. A picture of the possible or rather of
the inevitable swam before his eyes; a picture of a hungry, needy soul
compassed by wants, by fierce desires, with the dominant will to
fulfil them and no