m the thraldom
of chain and kennel, and eager to seek the Serpentine haunts of
water-nymphs, and of sticks that fell with a splash, and are brought
back time and again whilst the shaken spray bedews the onlookers; now
with the staid and solemn progression that is beloved of the equine
drawers of four-wheeled chariots, protesting with many growls against
a load of occupants.

He had met JOANNA. They had conversed. "An empty table, is it not?"
said she. "Nowhere!" said he, and they proceeded. His "Nowhere!" had
a penetrating significance--the more significant for the sense that it
left vague.

And so the marriage was arranged, the word that was to make one of
those who had hitherto been two had been spoken, and the celebrating
gifts came pouring in to the pair.

Sir JOHN walked home with triumph swelling high in his heart. Overhead
the storm-clouds gathered ominously. First with a patter, then with
a drenching flood, the prisoned rain burst its bars, and dashed
clamouring down to the free earth. He paused, umbrellaless, under
a glimmering lamp-post. The hurrying steeds of a carriage, passing
at great speed, dashed the gathered slush of the street over his
dark-blue Melton over-coat. The imprecations of the coachman and his
jeers mingled strangely with the elemental roar. Sir JOHN heeded
them not. He stood moveless for a space, then slowly drawing forth
his note-book, and sharpening his pencil, he wrote the following
phrase:--"Laid _Brother to Banjo_, one, two, three, 5 to 4."

CHAPTER IV.

A year had gone by, and with the spring that whispered softly in
the blossoming hedge-rows, and the melancholy cry of the female
fowl calling to her downy brood, JOANNA had learnt new lessons of a
beneficent life, and had crystallised them in aphorisms, shaken like
dew from the morning leaf of her teeming fancy.

They sat at table together. BINNS, the butler, who himself dabbled in
aphorism, and had sucked wisdom from the privy perusal of Sir JOHN's
note-book, had laid before them a dish on which reposed a small but
well-boiled leg of one that had trod the Southdowns but a week before
in all the pride of lusty life. There was a silence for a moment.

"You will, as usual, take the fat?" queried Sir JOHN.

"Lean for me to-day," retorted JOANNA, with one of her bright flashes.

"Nay, nay," said her husband, "that were against tradition, which
assigns to you the fat."

JOANNA pouted. Her mind rebelled against dictation. Besides