THREE MEN AND A MAID.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9021, 7 January 1908, Page 2

THREE MEN AND A MAID.

CHAPTER I.—Continued. "My goodness! What a row there would be! The Squire, with his tempv-r, would half kill Mr Warren!" she exclaimed. "There again you interrupt me with a reflection that is quite beside the mark," said Courthope. "We don't really care, do we, whether Robert half kills Warren or not, or kills Warren outright." He paused a little "By tne way, Robert mightn't find that so easy a job. Have you ever seen them fence together with foils?" "Yes," she replied, somewhat breathlessly. "I've seen them jumping about and stabbng at each other on the Vicarage lawn!" "And which of the two got in the greater number of hits?" "Mr Warren did, I believe." "He generally does. I have watched Robert come very near to apoplexy t in some of theip combats, ,and one of these times — take my word for it—in the midst of the give and take, my cousin's fatty heart will give one fast, last pit-a-pat- —and stop! Hannah, my pet. lam leading up to this: that Warren and Robert have made it a rule to have fenc-ing-bouts, cither at Edenhurst or at the Vicarage, every Thursday afternoon for some time past —ever since Robert threw up his commission in the militia, in fact. Last Thursday afternoon, when Warren was expected at Edenhurst to fence, he didn't come, and didn't send any excuse. Now that was odd for him, he's such a punctilious chap; so I wondered, and thought I'd stroll down to the church to see. But that was not a choir practice afternoon, nor was he at the organ, nor at the Vicarage. So I next went round to the Greyhound, as you may remember, and there learned that your sister, too, was. not at home. Evidently both Warren and Marjorie were missing. Very good! 'Heaven bless you, happy pair,' I thought to myself, till it was suggested inwardly to me by the excellent fiend who loves me better, Hannah, than all things, to take a stroll down Hewersfield Lane over the moor. I did so; and when I had reached the little covert beyond Ghyll Beck, and had Fennell's Tower in sight, what do you think I saw in the distance? Only two little human heads over the top of the battlements, and one of those heads had on a spread of felt hat such as were sported by the old cavaliers whom Monsieur Meissonnier delighted to paint, and the other head had on a hat such as blooms like a poppy. And I breathed another prayer, and blessed them again." "Oh, they meet at the tower?" whispered Hannah, in the awed accent of scandal. "They meet there, or, to be accurate, they have met at least once. Of course, 1 was a long way off, and can't be dead certain, but those two hats were doubtless the hats of Philip Warren and Marjorie Neyland, and of no one else. Now if these people have met once there, it comes into my mind that they may meet there again. The real point is, Hannah, that the tower has, as is usual with tcwers, a door." "Well?" "And that door a lock, and in that Sock an old key " "Yes!" "And that key might be turned—"Oh, gracious!" whispered, Hannah, "there comes somebody out ■of the shrubbery—it'll be all over Hudston that I was with you. I must run —■ —" "Yes, go. I'll come down to the Greyhound later." He sprang back under cover of the firs, and commenced to whistle a little, and his sallow face wrinkled in a smile as he saw Hannah stoop, walk a few yards, and stoop again, pretending to search for something. "Yes, my girl," he said to himself, "you are finding mischief, pecks of it, far more than you guess! At any rate, I have one willing assistant, and now to secure another! I have not seen Bennett for many days. This latest villainy should appeal to him, and it will have the added advantage of placing him further untfer my thumb. Yes, Bennett, limb of the law and of Satan, will come in useful here."

By ROBERT ERASER.

[Published By Special Aiirangement.] [All Eights Reserved.]

vat, winds of winter were already wawling down the moor gorges. The Squire was a man of sturdy build, somewhat pued and over red, fat in the lips, and bristly of moustache. He walked with that straddle of the legs which men get who are mostly a-horse-back. He came to the Greyhound, that evening a beUer man than he had long been, a man vexed with the old ways, and rnoekly meaning to do better next time. When old Jonas Nc; - land came out bustling from his presence to find and bring Marjorie to receive the bunch of orchids, Robert Courthope, left alone, paced the drawing -room grimly, collecting his rather scattered forces for the as-j sault, gripping his fists together, trying to think out his line of argument. But, as it happened, Marjorie was not in the and neither Jonas Neyland, rior his wife, Martha, nor his sister-in-law, Aunt Margaret, could find Margaret anywhere. In fact, Marjorie, had fled, having known from Hannah that the Squire would be coming. On the previous night Hannah had gone late into Marjorie's room, when the younger woman was before her mirror at her hair, making ready for bed, and Marjorie had said to Hannah without glancing round: "My gracious! This, indeed, is a prodigal's return! But it is quite excellent, Hannah. You have come to sleep with me once more?" "No," said Hannah gruffly, "I've come to get some of my hair-curlers out of a drawer." "Tell me, sister, in what way have 1 offended that you suddenly cease to sleep with me?" asked Marjorie, viewing herself from different angles in the glass. "Offence!" snapped Hannah. "Why talk of that? It is just that I don't like a bedfellow as a rule." "But I am not a fellow, nor a rule, ] am a maid and an exception your own long-lost sister. Just think!" Hannah's lips went a little whiter at this, pressing together with some venom, since she was not apt at countering sarcasm, and felt any show of wit as an affront. Marjorie's words, in fact, often had in her ears a certain dryness and suggestion of disdain. They sounded, as it were, out of a book, or out of the mouths of people in drawing-rooms, foreign and sour to Hannah's taste. "There's nothing of that," she protested, seeking in drawers for the pretended hair-curlers. "I am accustomed to sleep across the passage, and I prefer it if you don't mind." "Then why did you sleep with me at first?" asked Marjorie. "Oh, at first I thought you would be lonely in a place which had grown strange to you, and as a younger one you were to be indulged, so I " "Decided to keep me going with j kicks shroughout the night, is it so?" "If I kicked you, I won't kick you any more.," was the prompt retort. "So you have that much to be glad of at any rate." "Yet I am not glad, Hannah," said Marjorie, with a glance her shoulder, on whose snow her hair rolled in golds. "J want us to be ever such chums, you see. and a kiss in the morning will repay me for all nights of kicks, dear, if you will. Will you? You must say, 'yes.' " "There's no 'must' about i l ," was Hannah's ungracious answer. "I am not one of those to be got over by soft words when I don't want to do a thing; you ought to know that by this time Marjorie." "I begin to know,"said her sister, bending aside to manage the mass of hair, and brush it here and there in long tresses, "but," she added, "nice people are more or less persuadable, aren't they? and responsive to the impulses of affection." "Oh, I'm not nice," answered Hannah, with a still stiffer lip, and bending of brows. "1 hate the word. I leave that to the likes of you, you see." "You aro quite nice in your way, too," mused Marjorie aloud, "when you don't choose to be nasty. And why should you ever choose the way of unkindness—especially to me, who am fond of you? For years I have been thinking of you, longing that aunt would let me come home, just to thow myself off before people, and see you proud of the things 1 had learnt; not a great deal, goodness knows, but things not within the ken of Hudston. I forgot that you were a woman; I thought only of the sister. But I was, and am, so keen to be friendly; no woman was ever very fond of me, except aunt " (To be continued.)

CHAPTER 11.

THE PERIL OF IT

The Greyhound Hotel was a quiet venerable pile, which had re-echoed to many an age of song and chucklings, balls and assemblies, and the baying of many a hound. It 3 halls were large, and its square bulk was not without a touch of quaintness and graceful architecture, because of the arcade with arches which ran along its south side. All the local grouse-shooters, and scen-ery-hunters, and seekers after moorland air, put up there, as a rriati>- "f course, for time and long standing had made it a part of the '■ county, like the moors, the trout, the garre and the gentry. There were drowsy times of the year indeed, When the Greyhound only woke up afier nightfall in the one bar where loc&J cronies sat, to tipple snugly. But\n "the season," old Jonas Neyland Wngled with gold, sweated with prosperity, and "the business went. That V oat active period of the year was wellWer, and the brackens were turned bx'tawn that day when Marjorie Neyland finpt came back from London to fall likte a stone hewn without hands into tike flow of things at Hudston, troub'iVig the waters. And now. a month\ later, on the evening when the SquiVe took his fate into his hands and cteme down to the •Greyhound in hiik most chosen era-