ting a car which I knew it would be
impossible to outpace. I could not enter into competition with longer
purses than my own, and if I had bought the fastest car in the market
somebody else would have bought one faster. But to-night---- By Jove!
How I envy that Motor Pirate. Imagine what the possession of that car
means on a night like this, with the roads clear from John-o'-Groat's to
Land's End. Fancy flying onwards at a speed none have ever attempted.
Can you not see the road unwinding before you like a reel of white
ribbon, hear the sweet musical drone of the wheels in your ears----" He
stopped abruptly.

He must have observed my natural amazement at the intensity of feeling
which his speech displayed, for he observed in a lighter tone--

"Not being Motor Pirates, however, the next best thing is, I suppose, to
go to bed and dream that we are." He turned on his heel and strode away
in one direction, while I went in the direction of my own home. But I
was in no hurry to get there. The night was too delightful.

In the few hours which had elapsed since we had sat down to dine, a
change had come over the face of the land. I could feel the presence of
Spring in the air, and all the youth in me awoke. The creatures of the
earth felt it too. In the silence of the night I could hear the crackle
of the buds as they cast off their winter coverings, hear the whisper of
the grass, which the countryman declares is the sound of growing blades,
hear the murmur of all animate things as they rose to welcome the
Springtide. My own heart leapt up with a renewal of hope. I stood awhile
outside Colonel Maitland's door, and breathed a prayer that it might be
my fortune to protect the fair inmate of the house from all harm through
life. I strolled slowly to my own door, but I did not enter. Moonbeams
beget love-dreams when one is still in the twenties.

Back again to the Colonel's house, back once more to my own. In all
probability I should have continued my solitary sentry-go and my
reverie until daybreak, had not my thoughts been sharply recalled to
earth. On reaching my own doorway for the fifth or sixth time I had just
turned, when I saw a black shadow on the road opposite the Maitlands'
house. One glance was enough; it was the Motor Pirate again, and I began
to count. "One--two--," the car passed me, "three--four;" it had
vanished round a turning of the road in the direction of St. Albans.

Even what I had already experienced of