would have brought submission; but she straightened her shoulders, and remarked coldly—

"That is not the way in which you ought to speak to me. Are you going to show me the letter?"

Doris caught her breath, said—"I can't!"—and fled.

 CHAPTER IV

The Morris's

LYNNTHORPE, Mr. Stirling's home, a large house in a park, lay about two miles from the parish church end of Lynnbrooke. But Mr. Stirling, instead of riding thitherward, shaped his course in the opposite direction, straight through the town. On quitting the latter, he followed a broad Roman road for some two miles, passing then the village of Deene, where lived his cousin's widow, Mrs. John Stirling, with her only son, Hamilton—commonly regarded as probable heir to the Stirling property, since it was believed to be entailed in the male line.

Instead of pursuing the high road, he turned off into a lane, three miles of which brought him to another, very narrow and winding, whence at length he emerged within sight of a lonely farm, upon a bleak hillside.

It was a neighbourhood far from town traffic, far from even the gentle stir of village life. The lane here ceased to exist; and his trot slackened to a walk, as he rode through a large meadow, on a grass-path. Fields of young corn grew near; and the "bent" of some stunted trees showed the force of prevailing westerly winds.

Distant lines of hills were pretty; and there was a healthful breeziness about the situation; but Mrs. Brutt's description of it as "the loveliest spot imaginable" was overdrawn, as her descriptions were wont to be.

Apart from the group of farm buildings stood the dwelling-house, with lattice windows and creeper-grown porch. The grunting of pigs alternated with cawings from a rookery not far off. Mr. Stirling, a fine-looking man on horseback, noted neither, his mind being otherwise engaged.

Somebody came striding through the gate; older by many years than the Squire; bigger and broader; roughly clad, with gaiters and heavy boots. His face, red-brown like a Ribstone pippin, was lighted by the bluest of eyes; his hands, large and muscular, were unused to 

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