avellers were ravenous. They had eaten nothing since breakfast, and
had driven from Windermere on the top of the coach in the keen evening
air. When the sharp edge of the appetite was blunted, Maulevrier began
to talk of his adventures since he and Molly had last met. He had not
being dissipating in London all the time--or, indeed, any great part of
the time of his absence from Fellside; but Molly had been left in
Cimmerian, darkness as to his proceedings. He never wrote a letter if he
could possibly avoid doing so. If it became a vital necessity to him to
communicate with anyone he telegraphed, or, in his own language, 'wired'
to that person; but to sit down at a desk and labour with pen and ink
was not within his capacities or his views of his mission in life.

'If a fellow is to write letters he might as well be a clerk in an
office,' he said, 'and sit on a high stool.'

Thus it happened that when Maulevrier was away from Fellside, no fair
_chatelaine_ of the Middle Ages could be more ignorant of the movements
or whereabouts of her crusader knight than Mary was of her brother's
goings on. She could but pray for him with fond and faithful prayer, and
wait and hope for his return. And now he told her that things had gone
badly with him at Epsom, and worse at Ascot, that he had been, as he
expressed it, 'up a tree,' and that he had gone off to the Black Forest
directly the Ascot week was over, and at Rippoldsau he had met his old
friend and fellow traveller, Hammond, and they had gone for a walking
tour together among the homely villages, the watchmakers, the timber
cutters, the pretty peasant girls. They had danced at fairs--and shot at
village sports--and had altogether enjoyed the thing. Hammond, who was
something of an artist, had sketched a good deal. Maulevrier had done
nothing but smoke his German pipe and enjoy himself.

'I was glad to find myself in a world where a horse was an exception and
not the rule,' he said.

'Oh, how I should love to see the Black Forest!' cried Mary, who knew
the first part of Faust by heart, albeit she had never been given
permission to read it, 'the gnomes and the witches--der Freischuetz--all
that is lovely. Of course, you went up the Brocken?'

'Of course,' answered Mr. Hammond; 'Mephistopheles was our _valet de
place_, and we went up among a company of witches riding on
broomsticks.' And then quoted,

'Seh' die Baeume hinter Baeumen,
Wie sie schnell vorueberruecken,