can call to mind the day as well as if it was yesterday. Didn't I fancy myself a buck in 'em!" Bates grinned and sparkled at the thought of those first top-boots. His poor old eyes, dim with years of long service, twinkled with the memory of those departed van ities. Bates," cried Vixen, looking at him resolutely, "I insist upon knowing what reason Captain Carmichael alleged for sending you away." "He didn't allege nothing, miss, and I ain't a-going to tell you what he said." "But you must. I order you to tell me ; you are still my servant, remember. You have always been a faithful servant, and I am sure you won't disobey me at the last. I insist upon knowing what Captain Carmichael said; however insulting his words may have been to me, they will not surprise me or wound me much. There is no love lost between him and me; I think everybody knows that. Don't be afraid of giving me pain, Bates. Nothing the captain could say would do that I despise him too much." 66 Now, Bates, what did he say?" "He said I was a fool, miss, or a old rogue, he weren't quite clear in his mind which. I'd been actin' as go-between with you and Mr. Vawdrey, encouragin' of you to meet the young gentleman in your rides, and never givin' the cap'en warnin', as your stepfeyther, of what was goin' on behind his back. He said it was shameful, and you was makin' yourself the talk of the county, and I was no better than I should be for aidin' and abettin' of you in disgracin' yourself. And then I blazed up a bit, miss, and maybe I cheeked him; and then he turned upon me sharp and short and told me to get out of the house this night, bag and baggage, and never to apply to him for a character; and then he counted out my wages on the table, miss, up to this evening, except to a halfpenny, by way of showing me that he meant business, perhaps. But I came away and left his brass upon the table staring him in the face. I ain't no pauper, praise be to God! I've had a good place and I've saved money, and I needn't lower myself by taking his dirty halfpence.' "And you're going away to-night!" exclaimed Vixen, hardly able to realize this calamity. That Captain Carmichael should have spoken insultingly of her and of Rorie touched her but lightly-she had spoken truly just now when she said that she scorned him too much to be easily wounded by his insolence-but that he should dismiss her father's old servant as he had sold her father's old horse, that this good old man who had grown from boyhood to age under her ancestral roof, who remembered her father in the bloom and glory of early youth, that this faithful servant should be thrust out at the bidding of an interloper, a paltry schemer, who in Vixen's estimation had been actuated by the basest and most mercenary motives when he married her mother, that these things should be, moved Violet Tempest with an overwhelming anger. She kept her passion under so far as to speak very calmly to Bates. Her face was white with suppressed rage, her great brown eyes shone with angry fire, her lips quivered as she spoke, and the rings on one clinched hand were ground into the flesh of the slender fingers. "Never mind, Bates," she cried, very gently; "I'll get you a good place before ten o'clock to-night. Pack up your clothes and be ready to go where I tell you two hours hence. But first saddle Arion." "Bless your heart, Miss Voylet, you're not going out riding this evening? Arion's done a long day's work." "I know that, but he's fresh enough to do as much more: I've just been looking at him. Saddle him at once, and keep him ready in his stable till I come for him. Don't argue, Bates. If I knew that I were going to ride him to death, I should ride him to-night all the same. You are dismissed without a character, are you?" cried Vixen, laughing bitterly. "Never mind, Bates; I'll give you a character, and I'll get you a place." She ran lightly off and was gone, while Bates stood stock-still, wondering at her. There never was such a young lady. What was there in life that he would not have done for her, were it to the shedding of blood? And to think that he was no more to serve and follow her, no longer to jog contentedly through the pine-scented forest, watching the meteoric course of that graceful figure in front of him, the lively young horse curbed by the light and dextrous hand, the ruddy brown hair glittering in the sunlight, the flexible form moving in unison with every motion of the horse that carried it! There could be no deeper image of desolation in Bates's mind than the idea that this rider and this horse were henceforth to be severed from his existence. What had he in gone. life save the familiar things and faces among which he had grown from youth to age? Separate him from these beloved surroundings, and he had no standpoint in the universe. The reason of his being would be Bates was as strictly local in his ideas as the zoophyte which has clung all its life to one rock. He went to the harnessroom for Miss Tempest's well-worn saddle and brought Arion out of his snug box, and wisped him and combed him, and blacked his shoes, and made him altogether lovelya process to which the intelligent animal was inclined to take objection, the hour being unseemly and unusual. He had scarcely finished Arion's toilet when Miss Tempest opened the stable door and looked in, ready to mount. She had her hunting-crop, with the strong horn hook for opening gates, her short habit, and looked altogether ready for business. "Hadn't I better come with you, miss?" Bates asked as he lifted her into her saddle. "No, Bates; you are dismissed, you know. It wouldn't do for you to take one of Captain Carmichael's horses; he might have you sent to prison for horse-stealing." "Lord, miss, so he might," said Bates, grinning; "I reckon he's capable of it. But I checked him pretty strong, Miss Voylet. The thought o' that'll always be a comfort to me. You wouldn't hav' knowed me for your feyther's old sarvant if you'd heard me. I felt as if Satan had got hold o' my tongue and was wagging it for me, the words came so pat. It seemed as if I'd got all the dictionary at the tip of my poor old tongue." "Open the gate," said Vixen; "I am going out by the wilderness." Bates opened the gate under the old brick | of his love and greatest need of his proarchway, and Vixen rode slowly away by tection. Her mother was a gentle, smiling unfrequented thickets of rhododendron and puppet to whom it were vain to appeal in arbutus, holly and laurel, with a tall moun- her necessities. Her mother's husband was tain-ash or a stately deodora rising up among an implacable enemy. Rorie, the friend of them here and there, dark against the opal her childhood, who might have been so evening sky. much, had given himself to another. She was quite alone. It was a lovely evening. The crescent moon rode high above the tree-tops; the sunset was still red in the west. The secret depths of the wood gave forth their subtle perfume in the cool, calm air. The birds were singing in suppressed and secret tones among the low branches. Now and then a bat skimmed across the open glade and melted into the woodland darkness, or a rabbit flitted past, gray and ghost-like. It was an hour when the woods assumed an awful beauty. Not to meet ghosts seemed stranger than to meet them. The shadows of the dead would have been in harmony with the mystic loveliness of this green solitude-a world remote from the track of men. Even to-night, though her heart was swelling with indignant pain, Violet felt all the beauty of these familiar scenes. They were a part of her life, and so long as she lived she must love and rejoice in them. To-night, as she rode quietly along, careful not to hurry Arion after his long day's work, she looked around her with eyes full of deep love and melancholy yearning. It seemed to her to-night that out of all that had been sweet and lovely in her life only these forest scenes remained. Humanity had not been kind to her. The dear father had been snatched away just when she had grown to the height of his stout heart, and had fullest comprehension The charcoal-burner in Mark Ash is not so solitary as I am," thought Vixen, bitterly. Charcoal-burning is only part of his life: he has his wife and children in his cottage at home." By and by she came out of the winding forest way into the straight high road that led to Briarwood, and now she put her horse at a smart trot, for it was growing dark already, and she calculated that it must be nearly eleven o'clock before she could accomplish what she had to do and get back to the Abbey House. And at eleven doors were locked for the night, and Captain Carmichael made a circuit of inspection as severely as the keeper of a prison. What would be said if she should not get home till after the gates were locked and the keys delivered over to that stern janitor? At last Briarwood came in sight above the dark clumps of beech and oak-a white portico, shining lamplit windows. The lodgegate stood hospitably open, and Violet rode in without question, and up to the porch. Roderick Vawdrey was standing in the porch, smoking. He threw away his cigar as Vixen rode up, and ran down the steps to receive her. "Why, Violet, what has happened?" he asked, with an alarmed look. It seemed to him that only sudden death or dire calamity could bring her to him thus |