cores!"

"Humph!" said Harding. "You are incorrigible, and that is all that can
be said about it."

Close to the edge of one of the fields along which they were driving,
some laborers were at work, hoeing potatoes. There were some splendid
grain-fields adjoining, and at a little distance stood a handsome
farm-house with thrifty-looking outbuildings. Leslie's spirit of
mischief was now up, and nothing but exercise could calm it.

"Hallo, there!" he called to the laborers, stopping the carriage at the
same time. One of the working-men stopped his work and came up to the
fence.

"Whose farm is this?"

"Mr. Bardeleau's, sir."

"Oh, Bardeleau! I know him. Crops look finely."

"Yes, very finely, sir," answered the workman.

"Going to the house soon?"

"Yes, sir, going in to dinner before long," answered the man.

"Well, my good man," said Leslie, "be good enough to give Mr. Bardeleau
the regards of Mr. Thompson, International Hotel, an old friend of his,
and to tell him that war has just broken out between England and the
United States, and that the President has this morning issued a
proclamation annexing Canada to the State of New York. Good morning."

Mischief of this character varied and enlivened the performances of that
day and the next, Harding alternately enjoying and protesting against
it. But on the third day there was a decided change in the programme.
Running over the register at the desk, before breakfast on Friday
morning, Leslie found the following four names, arrivals of the night
before: "Richard Crawford--John Crawford--Miss Isabel Crawford--Miss
Marion Hobart--New York City."

"Why, here are acquaintances--or at least one of them!" he called to
Harding, who was at a little distance. He might have said more than one
acquaintance, with propriety, for though he had met none of the
Crawfords except Bell, he knew so much of them from Josephine Harris
that he seemed to have known them for a twelvemonth.

"Who are they?" asked Harding, busy with a carriage-order.

"The Crawfords--and somebody else with them," answered Leslie. "You
remember the young ladies on Broadway, the impudent scoundrel and the
caning, a few days ago--one of them a Miss Crawford"--

"Yes, I remember," said Harding, with a little flush rising suddenly to
his face. He also remembered, beyond a doubt, that he had been very much
impressed by that young lady, and that had he _dared_, he would have
called at her house before leav