with a pair of secateurs, and engaged in cutting
the thorns back to a few ugly inches.

She smiled as he approached. "You don't understand roses?" she asked.
"If you don't, you'll be surprised at my hard pruning. If there's real
strength in the root, you can trust for June, no matter what a stick you
leave. The secret's under the ground; or, as you may say, under the
surface, as it is with folks."

"That helps me, ma'am," said Captain Cai, "to tell you it's like that
with my friend 'Bias--"

A whistle sounded up the valley. "The three-thirty coming!" said Mrs
Bosenna. "It's at the signal-box outside the tunnel."

"The three-thirty?" Captain Cai gasped and pulled out his watch.
"But that's 'Bias's train--and I was to meet him!"

"You _might_ just do it," hazarded Mrs Bosenna. "We count it half a
mile to the station, and by the time they have the luggage out--"

"I _must_ do it, ma'am! To think that--" Captain Cai held out a hand.
"I'd no notion--the time has flown so!"

"Dinah! Dinah!" called Mrs Bosenna, and as Dinah appeared at the back
door with a promptitude almost suspicious,--"Run and fetch Captain
Hocken's hat, girl! He has to catch a train."

Dinah vanished, and in the twinkling of an eye came running with the
hat; with a clothes-brush, too. "Confound her!" Captain Cai swore
inwardly as she insisted on brushing his coat, paying special attention
to a dry spot of mud on the right hip-pocket. Feminine attentions may
be overdone, and Mrs Bosenna showed more tactfulness than her maid.

"Have finished, you silly woman! Cannot you see that Captain Hocken is
dying to leave us? . . . But you are to bring your friend, sir, at the
first opportunity!"

She repeated this, calling it after him as he raced down the path.
At the footbridge he remembered the musical box in the bushes. But it
was too late. Mrs Bosenna had followed him to the head of the slope,
and stood watching, waving her handkerchief.

As he glanced back and up at her over his shoulder, his ear caught the
rumble of a train, not far up the valley. He must run! . . .

He ran, sticking his elbow to his sides. But soon the rumble of the
train grew to a roar. It was upon him. . . . It overtook him some three
hundred yards from the station, and the carriage windows, as he
staggered down the high road, went past him in a blur.

CHAPTER VII.

BIAS ARRIVES.

Captain Tobias Hunken sat patiently and ponderously upon a wooden
sea-che