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with a laugh.
    The line ran along a deep cutting, from either side of which
grew hazel bushes and a few larger trees. Leaning upon the parapet
of the bridge, Jasper kept his eye in the westward direction, where
the gleaming rails were visible for more than a mile. Suddenly he
raised his finger.
    'You hear?'
    Marian had just caught the far-off sound of the train. She
looked eagerly, and in a few moments saw it approaching. The front
of the engine blackened nearer and nearer, coming on with dread
force and speed. A blinding rush, and there burst against the
bridge a great volley of sunlit steam. Milvain and his companion
ran to the opposite parapet, but already the whole train had
emerged, and in a few seconds it had disappeared round a sharp
curve. The leafy branches that grew out over the line swayed
violently backwards and forwards in the perturbed air.
    'If I were ten years younger,' said Jasper, laughing, 'I should
say that was jolly! It enspirits me. It makes me feel eager to go
back and plunge into the fight again.'
    'Upon me it has just the opposite effect,' fell from Marian, in
very low tones.
    'Oh, don't say that! Well, it only means that you haven't had
enough holiday yet. I have been in the country more than a week; a
few days more and I must be off. How long do you think of
staying?'
    'Not much more than a week, I think.'
    'By-the-bye, you are coming to have tea with us to-morrow,'
Jasper remarked a propos of nothing. Then he returned to another
subject that was in his thoughts.
    'It was by a train like that that I first went up to London. Not
really the first time; I mean when I went to live there, seven
years ago. What spirits I was in! A boy of eighteen going to live
independently in London; think of it!'
    'You went straight from school?'
    'I was for two years at Redmayne College after leaving
Wattleborough Grammar School. Then my father died, and I spent
nearly half a year at home. I was meant to be a teacher, but the
prospect of entering a school by no means appealed to me. A friend
of mine was studying in London for some Civil Service exam., so I
declared that I would go and do the same thing.'
    'Did you succeed?'
    'Not I! I never worked properly for that kind of thing. I read
voraciously, and got to know London. I might have gone to the dogs,
you know; but by when I had been in London a year a pretty clear
purpose began to form in me. Strange to think that you were growing
up there all the time. I may have passed you in the street now and
then.'
    Marian laughed.
    'And I did at length see you at the British Museum, you
know.'
    They turned a corner of the road, and came full upon Marian's
father, who was walking in this direction with eyes fixed upon the
ground.
    'So here you are!' he exclaimed, looking at the girl, and for
the moment paying no attention to Jasper. 'I wondered whether I
should meet you.' Then, more dryly, 'How do you do, Mr
Milvain?'
    In a tone of easy indifference Jasper explained how he came to
be accompanying Miss Yule.
    'Shall I walk on with you, father?' Marian asked, scrutinising
his rugged features.
    'Just as you please; I don't know that I should have gone much
further. But we might take another way back.'
    Jasper readily adapted himself to the wish he discerned in Mr
Yule; at once he offered leave-taking in the most natural way.
Nothing was said on either side about another meeting.
    The young man proceeded homewards, but, on arriving, did not at
once enter the house. Behind the garden was a field used for the
grazing of horses; he entered it by the unfastened gate, and
strolled idly hither and thither, now and then standing to observe
a poor worn-out beast, all skin and bone, which had presumably been
sent here in the hope that a little more labour might still be
exacted from it if it were suffered to repose for a few weeks.
There were sores upon its back and legs; it stood in a fixed
attitude of despondency, just flicking away troublesome flies with
its grizzled tail.
    It was