with the objects of justice, such as one expects from all right-thinking people.”

“Why, sir, certainly,” said Parson Langney again, somewhat more dryly than before. And then, turning to his daughter, he added briskly, “Come, Joan, we must be returning. The lad below will do very well now, sir, with quiet, and the physic I have left for him. And I’ll pay him another visit in a day or two.”

As he addressed these last words to the lieutenant, the parson was already preparing to lower himself into the boat which had brought him. He seemed in haste to be gone.

Lieutenant Tregenna then helped the young lady down into the boat, giving her as he did so a somewhat piqued and resentful glance, which, however, she demurely refused to meet with a return look from her own black eyes until she was safely in the little boat beside her father.

Then, as the small craft was tossing amidst[24] the spray from the larger one, she did look up, with the struggling moonlight full upon her face, at the handsome young commander, on whom a touch of youthful arrogance sat not unbecomingly.

[24]

And Lieutenant Tregenna, as he saluted and watched the little boat, and in particular its fair occupant, was irritated and incensed beyond measure by what he took for an expression of merry defiance in her bright eyes.

[25]

[25]

CHAPTER II.

A STARTLING INCIDENT.

Hurst Court, where Lieutenant Tregenna presented himself next day, by Squire Waldron’s most obliging and pressing invitation, was an ugly Georgian house just outside the village of Hurst, standing in an extensive but little-cultivated park, much of which was in a primitive condition of gorse and tangle and unclipped, undersized trees.

Hurst Court

The mansion itself was not in the heart of the park, but was built near the road, with nothing but a little stretch of grass and a wooden fence between.

A great baying of hounds and noise of disputing 

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