a
"pecker-wood" on a far-away tree, and the timorous wet whistle of a
bob-white. The sun shone through the tracery of the foliage, making a
quivering mosaic of light and shadow all about him. A robin ran across
the grass with his breast puffed out as if he had been stealing apples;
now and then an inquisitive yellow-hammer darted above and in the bushes
cardinals wove slender sharp flashes of living crimson. The whole place
was very quiet now. For just one thrilling moment it had burgeoned into
sound and movement: when the sweaty horses had stood snorting and
stamping in the yard with the hounds scampering between their legs and
the riding-coats winking like rubies in the early sunshine!

Had she recognized him as the smudged tinkerer of the stalled car? "She
saw me drop that wretched brute through the window," he chuckled. "I
could take oath to that. But she didn't give me away, true little sport
that she was. And she won't. I can't think of any reason, but I know."
The chuckle broadened to an appreciative grin. "What an ass she must
have thought me! To risk a nasty bite and rob her of her brush into the
bargain! How she looked at me, just for a minute, with that thoroughbred
face, out of those sea-deep eyes, under that whorling, marvelous
heaped-up hair of hers! Was she angry? I wonder!"

At length he rose and went back to the house. With a bunch of keys he
had found he went to the stables, after some difficulty gained access,
and propped the crazy doors and windows open to the sun. The building
was airy and well-lighted and contained a dozen roomy box-stalls, a
spacious loft and a carriage-house. The straw bedding had been
unremoved, mice-gnawed sacking and rotted hay lay in the mangers, and
the warped harness, hanging on its pegs, was a smelly mass of mildew and
decay. In the carriage-house were three vehicles--a coach with
rat-riddled upholstery and old-fashioned hoop-iron springs eaten through
with rust, a rockaway and a surrey. The latter had collapsed where it
stood. He found a stick, mowed away the festooning cobwebs, and moved
the debris piece-meal.

"There!" he said with satisfaction. "There's a place for the motor--if
Uncle Jefferson ever gets it here."

It was noon when he returned, after a wash-up in the lake, to the meal
with which Aunt Daphne, in a costume dimly suggestive of a bran-meal
poultice with a gingham apron on, regaled him. Fried chicken, corn-bread
so soft and fluffy that it had to be lif