er--and retreated, for he saw that she had
overheard the conversation between him and her father.

'What! Mr. Smith!' said she in a tone in which tenderness and
contempt, pity and affected carelessness, were strangely mingled.
'So! you are going to turn gamekeeper to-night?'

Lancelot was blundering out something, when the squire interposed.

'Let her alone, Smith. Women will be tender-hearted, you know.
Quite right--but they don't understand these things. They fight
with their tongues, and we with our fists; and then they fancy their
weapons don't hurt--Ha! ha! ha!'

'Mr. Smith,' said Argemone, in a low, determined voice, 'if you have
promised my father to go on this horrid business--go. But promise
me, too, that you will only look on, or I will never--'

Argemone had not time to finish her sentence before Lancelot had
promised seven times over, and meant to keep his promise, as we all
do.

About ten o'clock that evening Lancelot and Tregarva were walking
stealthily up a ride in one of the home-covers, at the head of some
fifteen fine young fellows, keepers, grooms, and not extempore
'watchers,' whom old Harry was marshalling and tutoring, with
exhortations as many and as animated as if their ambition was
'Mourir pour la patrie.'

'How does this sort of work suit you, Tregarva, for I don't like it
at all! The fighting's all very well, but it's a poor cause.'

'Oh, sir, I have no mercy on these Londoners. If it was these poor
half-starved labourers, that snare the same hares that have been
eating up their garden-stuff all the week, I can't touch them, sir,
and that's truth; but these ruffians--And yet, sir, wouldn't it be
better for the parsons to preach to them, than for the keepers to
break their heads?'

'Oh?' said Lancelot, 'the parsons say all to them that they can.'

Tregarva shook his head.

'I doubt that, sir. But, no doubt, there's a great change for the
better in the parsons. I remember the time, sir, that there wasn't
an earnest clergyman in the vale; and now every other man you meet
is trying to do his best. But those London parsons, sir, what's the
matter with them? For all their societies and their schools, the
devil seems to keep ahead of them sadly. I doubt they haven't found
the right fly yet for publicans and sinners to rise at.'

A distant shot in the cover.

'There they are, sir. I thought that Crawy wouldn't lead me false
when I let him off.