“Did you not know them?”
“Ah!” said Pratt, “then you, too, noticed the similarity of feature, did you?”
“Similarity?”
“Yes; wonderfully like the ladies we met at the steeplechase, were they not?”
Richard Trevor looked hard in his friend’s face for a moment, and then they walked on side by side; for at a turn of the lane they met the young keeper, who had so suddenly changed the aspect of the encounter on the course.
“Ah, Humphrey!” said Trevor, “I’m glad I’ve met you. I’ll have a walk round the preserves.”
The young keeper touched his hat, changed the double gun from one shoulder of his well-worn velveteen coat to the other, whistled to a setter, and led the way to a stone stile.
“Another curious case of similarity of feature,” said Trevor, laughing.
“Well, no—I’ll give in now,” said Pratt; “but I say, Dick, old fellow, ought coincidences like this to occur out of novels?”
“Never mind that,” said Trevor, “the keeper here, who used to be my playmate as a boy, was as much astonished as I was—weren’t you, Humphrey?”