being over and the small crowd allowed to disperse, he
was free to hasten along to the gun-room to get his boots. "And I am
expected to shoot after having my nerves tortured like this! Who are
going with me? Rockminster and Lestrange? Well, they must understand
that I will not be hurried and flurried--I say I will not be hurried and
flurried. I don't want to fall down dead--my heart won't recover this
morning's work for months to come? God bless my soul, who asked that
insolent scoundrel to stay the night? And what's that, Waveney--the
ladies coming out to lunch? The ladies coming out to lunch on the
Twelfth--and the day half over; they must be out of their senses!"

"That is the arrangement," Captain Waveney said, with rather a rueful
laugh, as he, too, was lacing up his boots. "Lady Rosamund is going to
take a sketch of the luncheon-party."

"Let her take a sketch of the devil!" said this very angry and
inconsiderate papa. "Why can't she do it some other day?--why the
Twelfth? Good heavens! is everything conspiring to vex and annoy me so
that I sha'n't be able to hit a haystack?"

"Sir Hugh never says 'no' to anything that Lady Rosamund asks," observed
Captain Waveney, with much good-humor.

"Sir Hugh be--" And here Lord Fareborough expressed a wish about his
son-in-law and host that was probably only a figure of speech.

"Well, I don't know about that," the other replied, complacently, as he
went to the couch and removed the cloth laid over the guns to protect
them from the fine peat-dust (for a huge peat-fire burned continuously
in this great gun-room, for the drying of garments brought home wet from
the shooting or fishing). "I don't know about that; but at present the
arrangement is that we lunch at the top of the Bad Step; and I believe
that Miss Cunyngham is coming back from the Junction Pool, so that Lady
Rosamund may have her sketch complete."

Indeed, this untoward incident of the minister's misplaced zeal seemed
to throw a certain gloom over the small party to which Lionel soon found
himself attached, as it moved away from the house. The tall,
brown-bearded head keeper was in a sullen rage, though he could only
reveal his wrath in sharp little sentences of discontent. Sir Hugh had
also been put out at losing the best part of the morning; and Captain
Waveney, who was a dapper little man, full of brisk spirits, did not
care to talk to silent persons. As for Lionel, he was certainly very
nervous and anxio