rough the smoky light to where Holcombe sat intent on the rowel of
his spur. It apparently absorbed his entire attention, and his last
remark had been an unconsciously natural one. Carroll smiled grimly as
he folded the paper across his knee. "Now are the mighty fallen,
indeed," he murmured. He told Meakim of it a few minutes later, and
they both marvelled. "It's just as I told him, isn't it, and he
wouldn't believe me. It's the place and the people. Two weeks ago he
would have raged. Why, Meakim, you know Allen--Winthrop Allen? He's
one of Holcombe's own sort; older than he is, but one of his own
people; belongs to the same clubs; and to the same family, I think,
and yet Harry took it just as a matter of course, with no more
interest, than if I'd said that Allen was going to be married."

Meakim gave a low, comfortable laugh of content. "It makes me smile,"
he chuckled, "every time I think of him the day he came up them
stairs. He scared me half to death, he did, and then he says, just as
stiff as you please, 'If you'll leave me alone, Mr. Meakim, I'll not
trouble you.' And now it's 'Meakim this,' and 'Meakim that,' and 'have
a drink, Meakim,' just as thick as thieves. I have to laugh whenever I
think of it now. 'If you'll leave me alone, I'll not trouble you, Mr.
Meakim.'"

Carroll pursed his lips and looked up at the broad expanse of purple
heavens with the white stars shining through. "It's rather a pity,
too, in a way," he said, slowly. "He was all the Public Opinion we
had, and now that he's thrown up the part, why--"

The pig-sticking came to an end finally, and Holcombe distinguished
himself by taking his first fall, and under romantic circumstances. He
was in an open place, with Mrs. Carroll at the edge of the brush to
his right, and Miss Terrill guarding any approach from the left. They
were too far apart to speak to one another, and sat quite still and
alert to any noise as the beaters closed in around them. There was a
sharp rustle in the reeds, and the boar broke out of it some hundred
feet ahead of Holcombe. He went after it at a gallop, headed it off,
and ran it fairly on his spear point as it came toward him; but as he
drew his lance clear his horse came down, falling across him, and for
the instant knocking him breathless. It was all over in a moment. He
raised his head to see the boar turn and charge him; he saw where his
spear point had torn the lower lip from the long tusks, and that the
blood was