JUDITH, YOUR COUSIN. ALSO,
JUDITH, DUTIFUL DAUGHTER
OF JAMES OGILVIE.

Lindley's lips had touched the paper more than once, and half a dozen
sighs had crossed them, when suddenly he sprang to his feet.

A black star! Judith's horse, then, had a black star on its forehead!
And the horse with the black star that had but now strayed into the
stable yard! Could that be Judith's horse? Was Judith in danger or
distress? In another instant Lindley was out through the door, calling
aloud for the white horse with the black star between its eyes.

"But, my master," gasped a stable lad, "a squire from Master Ogilvie's
led the beast away not ten minutes ago. 'Twas Mistress Ogilvie's
horse, he said, strayed from the woods where the lady had been
gathering wild flowers."

And it was then at that moment that the Lady Barbara's mud-bespattered
outriders dashed into the courtyard, crying out that their lady's
coach was but a short distance behind them.

V.

The Lady Barbara's coach was wobbling slowly along the moonlit road
that led to The Jolly Grig. Fast enough it traveled, however,
according to Lady Barbara's way of thinking, in spite of the fact
that, at the tavern, she would find a lover and love awaiting her; the
lover, Lord Percy Farquhart, to whom she was betrothed, to whom she
would, indeed, be married in a fortnight's time, and love in the
person of Harry Ashley, who had loved her long, and whom she thought
she loved. Under her gauntlet Lord Percy's betrothal ring chafed her
finger. On her breast lay the red rose she wore always, for no other
reason than that Ashley had asked her so to do.

Querulous to the ancient dame who traveled with her she had been from
the start, and more than querulous to the two black-eyed maids whose
sole apparent duties were to divine my lady's wishes before they could
be expressed in words.

"Absurd; I say it is absurd that I should be dragged up to London in
all this mire," Lady Barbara cried, in a petulant, plaintive voice.
"What do I want with the latest fallals and fripperies to catch my
Lord Farquhart's fancy when he never so much as looks at me? I know
full as well as he that his Mistress Sylvia in rags would be more to
him than I would be if I were decked in the gayest gauds the town
could offer."

"Sylvia!" gasped her attendant dame.

"Ay, Sylvia,