reath," she answered. "You've left your book behind,
and my mistress sent it after you with her compliments." She held it
above the gate.

He sprang up the bank towards her. "And a pretty book, too, to be
found in your hands! You haven't been reading it, I hope."

"La, no! Is it wicked?"

"Much depends on where you happen to open it. Now if your sweetheart--"

"Who told you I had one?"

"Tut-tut-tut! What's his name?"

"Well, if you must know, I'm walking out with Corporal Zeally. But what
are you doing to the book?" For M. Raoul had taken out a penknife and
was slicing out page after page--in some places whole blocks of pages
together.

"When I've finished, I'm going to ask you to take it back to your
mistress; and then no doubt you'll be reading it on the sly. Here, I
must sit down: suppose you let me perch myself on the top bar of the
gate. Also, it would be kind of you to put up an arm and prevent my
overbalancing."

"I shouldn't think of it."

"Oh, very well!" He climbed up, laid the book on his knee and went on
slicing. "I particularly want her to read M. Rousseau's reflections on
the Pont du Gard; but I don't seem to have a book marker, unless you
lend me a lock of your hair."

"Were you the gentleman she danced with, at 'The Dogs,' the night of
the snowstorm?"

"The Pont du Gard, my dear, is a Roman antiquity, and has nothing to
do with dancing. If, as I suppose, you refer to the 'Pont de Lodi,'
that is a totally different work of art."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"And I don't intend that you shall."

He cut a small strip of braid from his coat, inserted it for a
bookmarker, and began to fold away the excised pages. "That's why I am
keeping these back for my own perusal, and perhaps Corporal Zeally's."

"Do you know him?" She reached up to take the book he was holding out
in his left hand, and the next instant his right arm was round her neck
and he had kissed her full on the lips. "Oh, you wretch!" she cried,
breaking free; and laughed, next moment, as he nearly toppled off the
gate.

"Know him? Why of course I do." M. Raoul was reseating himself on his
perch, when he happened to throw a look down into the road, and at
once broke into immoderate laughter. "Talk of the wolf--"

Polly screamed and ran. Below, at a bend of the road, stood a stoutish
figure in the uniform of the Axcester Volunteers--scarlet, with white
facings. It was Corporal Zeally, very slowly taking in the sc