and the game and the
luncheon at your leisure."

"And if you want me, Rose," Honnor Cunyngham said, "please put me in at
once, too; for I'm going away back to the Horseshoe Pool."

"My dear child," Lady Adela protested, "you'll break your neck some day
going down that Bad Step. I really think Hugh should have a windlass at
the top and let people down by a rope. Now look alive, Rose, and get
your sketch begun; I can see the gentlemen are all impatient to be off.
And mind you have Mr. Moore rolling up a cigarette: it won't be natural
otherwise."

She was right about one thing, anyway; the sportsmen were undoubtedly
impatient to be off; and it is to be feared that Lady Rosamund's sketch
suffered by the restlessness of her models. Indeed, after a very little
while, Lord Fareborough indignantly rose, and declared he never had
known a Twelfth of August so shamelessly sacrificed. He, for one, would
have no more of it. He called to the under-keeper to bring along the
gillies and the dogs; whereupon Lady Rosamund, who had a temper not
quite in consonance with the calm and statuesque beauty of her features,
closed her sketch-book and threw it aside, saying she would make the
drawing some other day when she found the gentlemen a little more
considerate.

And soon Lionel and his two companions were at their brisk occupation
again; though ever and anon his thoughts would go wandering away to the
Horseshoe Pool, and his fancy was picturing the fisher-maiden on the
summit of a great gray boulder, while a fifteen-pounder raced and chased
in the black deeps below. Sometimes he tried to get a glimpse of the
upper stretches of the river; but this was a dangerous trick when all
his attention was demanded by the work on hand. In any case his scrutiny
of those far regions was unavailing; for the Horseshoe Pool is on the
Geinig, a tributary of the Aivron, and not visible from the hill-slopes
along which they were now shooting.

The bag mounted up steadily; for the afternoon, despite the threats of
the morning, remained fine and clear and still; the birds lay close, and
the two outside guns were skilful performers. As for Lionel, he had now
acquired a certain confidence; he took no shame that he reserved for
himself the easy shots; the nasty ones he could safely leave to his
companions. At last, as they came in sight of a lovely little tarn lying
under a distant hillock, and could descry two small dots floating on the
surface of the wate