that I felt annoyed at the current of my thoughts being turned back to the topic.

   I answered shortly. My companion took no notice of my petulance.

   "You have always thought I cared nothing for speed," he remarked, "but you were mistaken. I thought I would keep my desires in the background until I had succeeded in perfecting a car which I knew it would be impossible to outpace. I could not enter into competition with longer purses than my own, and if I had bought the fastest car in the market somebody else would have bought one faster. But to-night—— By Jove! How I envy that Motor Pirate. Imagine what the possession of that car means on a night like this, with the roads clear from John-o'-Groat's to Land's End. Fancy flying onwards at a speed none have ever attempted. Can you not see the road unwinding before you like a reel of

   white ribbon, hear the sweet musical drone of the wheels in your ears——" He stopped abruptly.

   He must have observed my natural amazement at the intensity of feeling which his speech displayed, for he observed in a lighter tone—

   "Not being Motor Pirates, however, the next best thing is, I suppose, to go to bed and dream that we are." He turned on his heel and strode away in one direction, while I went in the direction of my own home. But I was in no hurry to get there. The night was too delightful.

   In the few hours which had elapsed since we had sat down to dine, a change had come over the face of the land. I could feel the presence of Spring in the air, and all the youth in me awoke. The creatures of the earth felt it too. In the silence of the night I could hear the crackle of the buds as they cast off their winter coverings, hear the whisper of the grass, which the countryman declares is the sound of growing blades, hear the murmur of all animate things as they rose to welcome the Springtide. My own heart leapt up with a renewal of hope. I stood awhile outside Colonel Maitland's door, and breathed a prayer that it might be my fortune to protect the fair inmate of the house from all harm through life. I strolled slowly to my own door, but I did not enter. Moonbeams beget love-dreams when one is still in the twenties.

   Back again to the Colonel's house, back once more to my own. In all probability I should have continued

   my solitary sentry-go and my reverie until daybreak, had not my thoughts been sharply recalled to earth. On 

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