another man lying just outside the walled garden. He had scrambled up, holding on to the fruit-trees, and had then jumped down and broken his leg, and he was not a stranger, but one of our very own men—an under-gardener whom we had all liked so much. Father believed that he had been bribed and led away by the man from London, and offered to let him off if he would tell all he knew, how many thieves there had been, and give the names and descriptions of the ones who had escaped, but he wouldn’t. Nothing would make him speak. We all tried in turns, and then the Vicar came and was shut up with him for an age, but it was no use. They say ‘there’s honour among thieves,’ and it’s true. He wouldn’t give the others away, so the two were sent to prison together, and they are there still. Father says they won’t mind a few months’ imprisonment, for when they come out they will get their share of the money and be quite rich. They’ll probably sail off for America or Australia and buy land, and live in luxury ever after. It is a shame! Father and mother feel it awfully. Such a dreadful thing to happen when you ask your friends to stay!”

“Yes! it’s a comfort to have nothing to lose. Mother has one diamond ring, which she always wears above the wedding one, and there’s nothing else worth stealing in the house, except watches and silver spoons, so that Aunt Maria need fear no qualms on account of her present visitor. No one will set her house on fire on account of my jewels—a few glass beads and a gold safety-pin, all told! You see them before you now!” Darsie tossed her head and pointed towards her treasures with an air of such radiant satisfaction that Noreen and Ida dropped the effort to be polite, and pealed with delighted laughter.

“You are a funny girl! You do amuse us. It’s so nice to have a new friend. The girls near here are so deadly dull. You seem so full of spirit.”

“Too full. It runs away with me. I act first and think afterwards. Not a good principle for a working life,” pronounced Miss Darsie sententiously as she searched among the green leaves for a strawberry sufficiently large and red to suit her fastidious taste. The Percivals watched her with fascinated gaze. An hour before they would have professed the most profound pity for a girl who lived in a street, owned neither horse nor dog, and looked forward to earning her own living, but it was with something more closely resembling envy that they now regarded Darsie Garnett, weighted as she was with all these drawbacks. There was about her an air of breeziness, of adventure, which shook them out of their self-complacence. It no longer seemed the 

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