ILLUSTRATIONS

“Once more were damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled. . . .”Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
“. . . He was always ready to constitute himself a hostile army or a band of marauding Indians”[6]
“‘Where’s Harold?’ I asked presently. ‘Oh, he’s just playin’ muffin-man as usual’”[16]
“When at last the atmosphere was clear of his depressing influence, we met despondently in the potato-cellar”[34]
“Instead of active ‘pretence,’ with its shouts and its perspiration, how much better—I held—to lie at ease and pretend to one’s self, in green and golden fancies”[40]
“. . . And then, my cheek on the cool marble, lulled by the trickle of water, I slipped into dreamland out of real and magic world alike”[64]
“‘Now we’ll go on,’ began Charlotte once more”[70]
“Edward led the race home at a speed which one of Ballantyne’s heroes might have equalled but never surpassed”[88]
“This overland route had been revealed to us one day by the domestic cat, when hard pressed in the course of an otter-hunt”[104]
“A straight flagged walk led up to the cool-looking old house, and my host, lingering in his progress at this rose-tree and that, forgot all about me at least twice”[112]
“Meanwhile Charlotte and I crouched in the window-seat, . . .”[124]
“‘She’s off with those vicarage girls again,’ said Edward”[136]
“We put the Argo’s head upstream, since that led away from the Larkin province”[148]
“Then he stood up, and he was very straight and tall, and the sunset was in his hair and beard as he stood there, high over me”[174]
“Westward the clouds were massing themselves in a low violet bank; below them, to north and south, as far round as the eye could reach, a narrow streak of gold ran out ... I turned for a last effort”[186]
“‘I’ve been chopping up wood,’ he explained, in a guilty sort of way”[200]
“We entered in noiseless file, the room being plunged in darkness, except for a bright strip of moonlight on the floor”[214]
“Shops came first, of course, . . .”[230]
“. . . Selina and Charlotte were busy stuffing Edward’s rabbits with unwonted forage, bilious and green”[250]