ation, short turns on four legs not being
apparently the easy thing it would seem from so much youthful
suppleness. The dignity of the elder hounds did not suffer them to move,
but they looked on from erect postures about the hearth with glistening
eyes and slobbering jaws.

Ever and anon the deep blue eyes of Millicent were lifted to the outer
gloom, as if she took note of its sinister aspect. She showed scant
interest in the stranger, whose gaze seldom left her as he sat beside
the fire. He was a handsome man, his face and figure illumined by the
firelight, and it might have been that he felt a certain pique, an
unaccustomed slight, in that his presence was so indifferent an element
in the estimation of any young and comely specimen of the feminine sex.
Certainly he had rarely encountered such absolute preoccupation as her
smiling far-away look betokened as she went back and forth with her
young canine friends at her heels, or stood at the table deftly slicing
the salt-rising bread, the dogs poised skilfully upon their hind-legs
to better view the appetizing performance; whenever she turned her face
toward them they laid their heads languish-ingly askew, as if to remind
her that supper could not be more fitly bestowed than on them. One, to
steady himself, placed unobserved his fore-paw on the edge of the table,
his well-padded toes leaving a vague imprint as of fingers upon the
coarse white cloth; but John Dundas was a sportsman, and could the
better relax an exacting nicety where so pleasant-featured and affable
a beggar was concerned. He forgot the turmoils of his own troubles as
he gazed at Millicent, the dreary aspect of the solitudes without, the
exile from his accustomed sphere of culture and comfort, the poverty
and coarseness of her surroundings. He was sorry that he had declined
a longer lease of Roxby's hospitality, and it was in his mind to
reconsider when it should be again proffered. Her attitude, her gesture,
her face, her environment, all appealed to his sense of beauty, his
interest, his curiosity, as little ever had done heretofore. Slice after
slice of the firm fragrant bread was deftly cut and laid on the plate,
as again and again she lifted her eyes with a look that might seem to
expect to rest on summer in the full flush of a June noontide without,
rather than on the wan, wintry night sky and the plundered, quaking
woods, while the robber wind sped on his raids hither and thither so
swiftly that n