eeks, 'you have no business
to say such things of us; we have given you no cause to do so!'

Miss Miller just nodded her head up and down excitedly.

'I say just what I like, my dear, and no one is to dictate to me as to
my manner of speech, least of all a young chit of a girl who knows
nothing of life!'

Then Elfie came to the rescue, whilst Clare flounced out of the room in
great indignation.

'Don't be cross with us, Miss Miller,' she said, in her pretty coaxing
way. 'Major Lester left us when very angry, and you mustn't believe
all he said about us.'

But Miss Miller would not be appeased, and she left very soon,
declaring that it was all very 'strange indeed, and most mysterious,'
and that 'people who could not be straightforward, and made their own
plans without reference to their spiritual guide, were a great trial to
have in the neighbourhood!'

'It really seems,' said Agatha, with a weary sigh, 'that Mr. Lester's
legacy will prove anything but a blessing! I do wish people would
leave us alone.' But a short time afterwards Major Lester's wrath and
Miss Miller's strong partisanship in his cause were quite eclipsed by a
greater trouble.

Agatha took in _The Times_, and it was generally delivered at their
house about twelve o'clock in the morning, by the postmistress's little
boy, directly he came home from school.

One morning Clare met him at the gate, and opened it herself. She was
feeling anxious and uneasy. For the first time Captain Knox had missed
the mail, and she was full of gloomy forebodings.

Agatha was tying up some straggling rose branches in the verandah, and
Elfie practising away in the drawing-room.

'Any news, Clare?' Agatha asked carelessly.

There was no answer. She looked up. Clare slowly came towards her,
paper in hand. She was in a fresh white dress, with a bunch of crimson
roses in her belt, her golden hair shining in the sun, but her face was
as white as her dress itself, and she stared at Agatha as if she did
not see her. Agatha dropped her hammer and nails with a crash to the
ground.

'What is it, Clare? anything about Gwen?' she asked, in frightened
tones.

Clare handed her the paper without a word, and still gazed before her,
as if she were in a dream.

Agatha soon found it. Only a terse, short telegram, mentioning that
reports of a massacre of a surveying party had just reached the African
coast, and it was feared that none had escaped alive.

Captain Kno