ocal history is concerned has
been shamefully neglected. Do make good the deficiencies"--smiling.

Garth laughed a little.

"Very well, I will. I always have a kind of fellow-feeling for Friar
Anselmo. But I propose we investigate the tea-basket first."

They established themselves beneath the shelter of a big boulder, Garth
first spreading a rug which he had brought from the boat for Sara to sit
on. Then he unstrapped the tea-basket, and it became evident either that
Mrs. Judson had a genius for assembling together the most fascinating
little cakes and savoury sandwiches, accompanied by fragrant tea, hot
from a thermos flask, or else that she had acted under instructions from
some one to whom the cult of afternoon tea as sublimated by Rumpelmayer
was not an unknown quantity. Sara, sipping her tea luxuriously, decided
in favour of the latter explanation.

"For a confirmed misogynist," she observed later on, when, the
feast over, he was repacking the basket, "you have a very complete
understanding of a woman's weakness for tea."

"It's a case of cause and effect. A misogynist"--caustically--"is the
product of a very complete understanding of most feminine weaknesses."

Sara's slender figure tautened a little.

"Do you think," she said, speaking a little indignantly, "that it
is quite nice of you to invite me out to a picnic and then to launch
remarks of that description at my head?"

"No, I don't," he acknowledged bluntly. "It's making you pay some one
else's bill." His lean brown hand closed suddenly over hers. "Forgive
me, Sara!"

The abrupt intensity of his manner was out of all proportion to the
merely surface friction of the moment; and Sara, sensing something
deeper and of more significance behind it, hurriedly switched the
conversation into a less personal channel.

"Very well," she said lightly, disengaging her hand. "I'll forgive you,
and you shall tell me about Friar Anselmo." She lifted her eyes to
the leering, sinister face that protruded from the Devil's Hood. "As,
presumably, from his choice of a profession, he, too, had no love for
women, you ought to enjoy telling his story," she added maliciously.

Garth's eyes twinkled.

"As a matter of fact, it was love o' women that was Anselmo's undoing,"
he said. "In spite of his vows, he fell in love--with a very beautiful
Spanish lady, and to make matters worse, if that were possible, the
lady was possessed of a typically jealous Spanish husband, who