'Click, click! gee-up, Ratton! we'll pass them again.'

So they did, Lady Caergwent calling out, 'Ah! I pity you. You are too low to see this glorious sight.'

'All very well talking,' called back Cherry; 'but who had to be poked to make them look at all?'

'Ay! What do you think they were doing!' shouted Angela. 'Sounds reached us about Casuistry and Jeremy Taylor.'

'You could hear nothing in the din that came up to us,' retorted Felix, looking round.

Indeed, Lady Caergwent was in her element. She liked nothing so well as a kind of discussion on character, a sort of fitful Friends in Council, plentifully interlarded with historical or fictitious allusions; but she did not often get the opportunity, for her historical tastes were so much more vivid than most of her contemporaries, that she always had to guard against seeming pedantic; but, thanks to Felix's habit of keeping a solid book in hand, and always thoroughly getting up whatever he had to write about, he was a man of great range of information, and could reply to her bright crude fancies with depth or sportiveness as occasion served, enjoying the tête-à-tête as much as she did.

Meantime, the horses climbed higher still and higher, rougher still and rougher, till the final gate was opened; the wheels emitted only an occasional creak on the soft bent-grass, and the breeze refreshed the travellers, who were soon hailed by all the pupils and all the dogs, and conducted to the Penbeacon saloon. This was a deserted slate-quarry, where the mounds of rubbish were old enough to be covered with hawthorn, mountain-ash, travellers-joy, and exquisite wreaths of bramble, so as to afford shade at any period of the day; and around was a delicious carpet of soft grass, thyme, eye-bright, ladies'-fingers, and rock-rose. Beneath lay the whole panorama of the Ewe valley and the estuary, the bridge spanning it, and the Castle jutting out into the sparkling sea, where here and there a sail, white or umber, or puff of steam, glided along the blue. The intense clearness of the air rendered the scene a fresh joy to those who knew it best, and entranced the new-comers, though they were told they would see it still better when they had climbed to the top of Penbeacon, which, with tracking the source of the Leston, was a regular part of the programme.

Operations could, however, only begin with preparations for the meal; and while Felix, Clement, and Major Harewood drove on to deposit horses and carriages at the farm, there was a general unpacking of hampers, Cherry securing that which was to be untouched till dinner-time, by sitting upon it.

'I say,' observed Will to Robina, as he opened one of the letters that they had brought up to this unpostal region, 'here's a go! He may be coming to-day!' and he signed towards Lady Caergwent, who, with Bernard, was compounding a salad.

'Impossible! To-day?'