y insolent to me, and
that I had very serious intentions of sending him to look for the one
and pay forfeit for the other."

"Yes, I broke his rod, and I 'll pay for it, or, if he's a gentleman,
I'll beg his pardon, or fight him," said the boy, in a tone of
ill-repressed anger.

"When there is an evident mistake somewhere," said Layton, gently, "it
only needs a moment of forbearance to set it right."

"Here's how it all happened," broke in the boy, eagerly. And in a few
words he related his chance arrival at the spot, how he had seen the rod
in what he deemed imminent danger, and how with the best intentions he
had interfered to save it.

"I beg you to accept all my excuses for what I have said to you," said
Heathcote, with a frank and manly courtesy. "I am quite ashamed of my
ill-temper, and hope you'll forgive it."

"To be sure I will. But what about the rod,--you can't easily get such
another in these parts?"

The boy looked eagerly at Layton as he spoke. Layton as quickly gave an
admonitory glance of caution, and the youth's instinctive good breeding
understood it.

"I think you came over with a party of friends to see the villa," said
Heathcote, to relieve the awkward pause between them.

"Not friends, exactly; people of our hotel."

Heathcote smiled faintly, and rejoined,--

"Some of our pleasantest acquaintances come of chance intimacies,--don't
you think so?"

"Oh, for the matter of that, they 're jolly enough. There's a wonderful
Londoner, and a rare Yankee, and there's an Irishman would make the
fortune of the Haymarket."

"You must own, Harry, they are all most kind and good-natured to you,"
said Layton, in a tone of mild half-rebuke.

"Well, ain't I just as--what shall I call it?--polite and the like to
them? Ay, Layton, frown away as much as you like, they're a rum lot."

"It is young gentlemen of this age who nowadays are most severe on the
manners and habits of those they chance upon in a journey, not at all
aware that, as the world is all new to them, their criticism may have
for its object things of every-day frequency."

The youth looked somewhat vexed at this reproof, but said nothing.

"I have the same unlucky habit myself," said Heathcote, good-humoredly.
"I pronounce upon people with wonderfully little knowledge of them,
and no great experience of the world neither; and--case in point--your
American acquaintance is exactly one of those I feel the very strongest
antipathy to. We