nsity
to pursue it. Catching up a handful of earth from the lane, he shied it
in the proper direction, and tore in at the gate after it.

Nothing came of the pursuit. The trespasser had earthed itself, and Mr.
Dan came slowly back again. He had nearly approached the gate, when
somebody passed it, walking up the lane with a very quick step, from the
direction in which he, Dan, was bound. Dan saw enough to know that it
was not Rachel, for it was the figure of a man; but Dan set off to run,
and emerged from the gate just in time to catch another glimpse of the
person, as he disappeared beyond the windings of the lane.

"'Twarn't Rachel, at all events," was his comment. And he turned and
pursued his way again.

It was somewhere about this time that Tynn made his appearance in the
dining-room at Verner's Pride, to put away the dessert, and set the tea.
The stir woke up Mrs. Verner.

"Send Rachel to me," said she, winking and blinking at the tea-cups.

"Yes, ma'am," replied Tynn.

He left the room when he had placed the cups and things to his
satisfaction. He called for Rachel high and low, up and down. All to no
purpose. The servants did not appear to know anything of her. One of
them went to the door and shouted out to the laundry to know whether
Rachel was there, and the answering shout "No" came back. The footman at
length remembered that he had seen her go out at the hall door while the
dinner was in. Tynn carried this item of information to Mrs. Verner. It
did not please her.

"Of course!" she grumbled. "Let me want any one of you particularly, and
you are sure to be away! If she did go out, she ought not to stay as
long as this. Who's this coming in?"

It was Frederick Massingbird. He entered, singing a scrap of a song;
which was cut suddenly short when his eye fell on the servant.

"Tynn," said he, "you must bring me something to eat. I have had no
dinner."

"You cannot be very hungry, or you'd have come in before," remarked Mrs.
Verner to him. "It is tea-time now."

"I'll take tea and dinner together," was his answer.

"But you ought to have been in before," she persisted; for, though an
easy mistress and mother, Mrs. Verner did not like the order of meals to
be displaced. "Where have you stayed, Fred? You have not been all this
while taking Sibylla West to Bitterworth's."

"You must talk to Sibylla West about that," answered Fred. "When young
ladies keep you a good hour waiting, while they make thems