."

"Yes, Miss Enthusiasm, I suppose there ought to be," and looking up, I
could see that Mr. Harry was gazing admiringly into his cousin's face.

"Please tell me some more about the Englishman," said Miss Laura.

"There isn't much to tell. He lives alone, only coming occasionally
to the village for supplies, and though he is poorer than poverty, he
despises every soul within a ten-mile radius of him, and looks upon us
as no better than an order of thrifty, well-trained lower animals."

"Why is that?" asked Miss Laura, in surprise.

"He is a gentleman, Laura, and we are only common people. My father
can't hand a lady in and out of a carriage as Lord Chesterfield can, nor
can he make so grand a bow, nor does he put on evening dress for a
late dinner, and we never go to the opera nor to the theatre, and
know nothing of polite society, nor can we tell exactly whom our
great-great-grandfather sprang from. I tell you, there is a gulf between
us and that Englishman, wider than the one young Curtius leaped into."

Miss Laura was laughing merrily. "How funny that sounds, Harry. So
he despises you," and she glanced at her good-looking cousin, and his
handsome buggy and well-kept horse, and then burst into another merry
peal of laughter.

Mr. Harry laughed, too. "It does seem absurd. Sometimes when I pass him
jogging along to town in his rickety old cart, and look at his pale,
cruel face, and know that he is a broken-down gambler and man of the
world, and yet considers himself infinitely superior to me a young man
in the prime of life, with a good constitution and happy prospects, it
makes me turn away to hide a smile."

By this time we had left the river and the meadows far behind us, and
were passing through a thick wood. The road was narrow and very broken,
and Fleetfoot was obliged to pick his way carefully. "Why does the
Englishman live in this out-of-the-way place, if he is so fond of city
life?" said Miss Laura.

"I don't know," said Mr. Harry. "Father is afraid that he has committed
some misdeed, and is in hiding; but we say nothing about it. We have not
seen him for some weeks, and to tell the truth, this trip is as much to
see what has become of him, as to make a demand upon him for the
money. As he lives alone, he might lie there ill, and no one would
know anything about it. The last time that we knew of his coming to
the village was to draw quite a sum of money from the bank. It annoyed
father, for he said h