t nothing
of the sort would happen if I was present. Kiomi walked humbly with her
head bent, leaving me the thick rippling coarse black locks of her
hair for a mark of observation. We were entertained at her camp in the
afternoon. I saw no sign of intelligence between her and Heriot. On my
asking her, the day before, if she remembered him, she said, 'I do, I'm
dangerous for that young man.' Heriot's comment on her was impressed
on me by his choosing to call her 'a fine doe leopard,' and maintaining
that it was a defensible phrase.

She was swept from my amorous mind by Mabel Sweetwinter, the miller's
daughter of Dipwell. This was a Saxon beauty in full bud, yellow as
mid-May, with the eyes of opening June. Beauty, you will say, is easily
painted in that style. But the sort of beauty suits the style, and the
well-worn comparisons express the well-known type. Beside Kiomi she was
like a rich meadow on the border of the heaths.

We saw them together on my twenty-first birthday. To my shame I awoke in
the early morning at Riversley, forgetful of my father's old appointment
for the great Dipwell feast. Not long after sunrise, when blackbirds
peck the lawns, and swallows are out from under eaves to the flood's
face, I was hailed by Janet Ilchester beneath my open windows. I knew
she had a bet with the squire that she would be the first to hail me
legal man, and was prepared for it. She sat on horseback alone in the
hazy dewy Midsummer morning, giving clear note:

'Whoop! Harry Richmond! halloo!' To which I tossed her a fox's brush,
having a jewelled bracelet pendant. She missed it and let it lie, and
laughed.

'No, no; it's foxie himself!--anybody may have the brush. You're
dressed, are you, Harry? You were sure I should come? A thousand happy
years to you, and me to see them, if you don't mind. I 'm first to wish
it, I'm certain. I was awake at three, out at halfpast, over Durstan
heath, across Eckerthy's fields--we'll pay the old man for damage--down
by the plantation, Bran and Sailor at my heels, and here I am. Crow,
cocks! bark, dogs! up, larks! I said I'd be first. And now I 'm round
to stables to stir up Uberly. Don't be tardy, Mr. Harry, and we'll be
Commodore Arson and his crew before the world's awake.'

We rode out for a couple of hours, and had to knock at a farmhouse for
milk and bread. Possibly a sense of independence, owing to the snatching
of a meal in midflight away from home, made Janet exclaim that she