et match this afternoon."

"Why you've just paid the bill, sir! There's only breakfast, and the
sandwiches you're welcome to, and very sorry I am to part with you,
sir."

"Better luck another time, I hope, Mrs. Foulton," he answered, smiling.
"I must go upstairs and pack my bag. I shan't forget your garden with
its delicious flowers."

"It's a shame as you've got to leave it, sir," Mrs. Foulton said
heartily. "If my Richard were alive he'd never have let you go for all
the Miss Thorpe-Hattons in the world. But John--he's little more than a
lad--he'd be frightened to death for fear of losing the farm, if I so
much as said a word to him."

Macheson laughed softly.

"John's a good son," he said. "Don't you worry him."

He went up to his tiny bedroom and changed his clothes for a suit of
flannels. Then he packed his few belongings and walked out into the
world. He lit a pipe and shouldered his portmanteau.

"There is a flavour of martyrdom about this affair," he said to himself,
as he strolled along, "which appeals to me. I don't think that young man
has any sense of humour."

He paused every now and then to listen to the birds and admire the view.
He had the air of one thoroughly enjoying his walk. Presently he turned
off the main road, and wandered along a steep green lane, which was
little more than a cart-track. Here he met no one. The country on either
side was common land, sown with rocks and the poorest soil, picturesque,
but almost impossible of cultivation. A few sheep were grazing upon the
hills, but other sign of life there was none. Not a farmhouse--scarcely
a keeper's cottage in sight! It was a forgotten corner of a not
unpopulous county--the farthest portion of a belt of primeval forest
land, older than history itself. Macheson laughed softly as he reached
the spot he had had in his mind, and threw his bag over the grey stone
wall into the cool shade of a dense fragment of wood.

"So much," he murmured softly, "for the lady of Thorpe!"

CHAPTER VI

CRICKET AND PHILOSOPHY

"The instinct for games," Wilhelmina remarked, "is one which I never
possessed. Let us see whether we can learn something."

In obedience to her gesture, the horses were checked, and the footman
clambered down and stood at their heads. Deyes, from his somewhat
uncomfortable back seat in the victoria, leaned forward, and, adjusting
his eyeglass, studied the scene with interest.

"Here," he remarked, "we have the 'flan