The questioner was Frank. In crossing the grounds, some little distance from home, he came upon Charles Raynor. Charles was craning his neck over a stile, by which the high hedge was divided that bordered the large, enclosed, three-cornered tract of land known as the common. On one side of the common were those miserable dwellings, the neglected cottages: in a line with them ran the row of skeletons, summarily stopped in process of erection. On the other side stood some pretty detached cottages, inhabited by a somewhat better class of people; whilst this high hedge—now budding into summer bloom, and flanked with a sloping bank, rich in moss and weeds and wild flowers—bordered the third side. In one corner, between the hedge and the better houses, flourished a small grove of trees. It all belonged to Major Raynor.
"Nothing particular," said Charley, in answer to the question. "I was only looking at a fellow."
Frank sent his eyes over the green space before him. Three or four paths traversed it in different directions. A portion of it was railed off by wooden fencing, and on this some cattle grazed; but on most of it grass was growing, intended for the mower in a month or two's time. Frank could not see a soul; and said so. Some children, indeed, were playing before the huts; but Charles had evidently not alluded to them: his gaze had been directed to the opposite side, near the grove.
"He has disappeared amongst those trees," said Charles.
"Who was it?" pursued Frank: for there was something in his young cousin's tone and manner suggestive of uneasiness; and it awoke his own curiosity.
Charles turned and put his back against the stile. He had plucked a small twig from the hedge, and was twirling it about between his lips.
"Frank, I am in a mess. Keep a look-out yonder, and if you see a stranger, tell me."
"Over-run the constable at Oxford this term, as before?" questioned Frank, leaping to the truth by instinct.
Charles nodded. "And I assure you, Frank," he added, attempting to excuse himself, "that I no more intended to get into debt this last term than I intended to hang myself. When I went down after Christmas, I had formed the best resolutions in the world. I told the mother she might trust me. No one could have wished to keep straighter than I wished: and somehow——"
"You didn't," put in Frank at the pause.