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him who and what I was, the route I had sketched out for my riding-tour, and my intention of taking all my travelling-gear with me on horseback, in a light valise strapped on my back, he had maintained perfect reticence about himself. At the time this had seemed natural, for my position and needs as a traveller had been on the surface, while he (doubtless a resident in the neighborhood) had merely obeyed an instinct of kindness in offering to serve those needs! So I had half unconsciously reasoned at the time. But now in solitude and darkness on Dartmoor, I wished I had found out more about him, or let him find out less about

me.

It was a trifle, but it came back to me now vividly. On parting he had laughingly cautioned me against wearing a valuable diamond ring which he just happened to observe on my left hand, during my lonely ride. "Not that you run any risk of being robbed by any of those who are indigenous to the moor soil," he said, "but some of the high roads about here are a good deal infested by the genus tramp, fellows who have limped down from London rookeries, and who burgle and rob so cleverly that they contrive to throw the odium on local rascality, which I believe really to be innocent of all offence in that line."

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These words of his recurred to me now, and I lost a few minutes in wrenching my ring off my soddened finger, and putting it away securely in one of the pockets of little valise. Then I rode on in the dreary darkness, trying to persuade myself that I enjoyed the uncertainty and romantic discomfort of being alone on an unknown part of Dartmoor on a black night in the dripping rain.

On lifting up my head and gathering up the reins, I pushed on with renewed vigor, for there just before me was a light in a window at last. It burned with such bright encouragement that I gave a shout in response to its mute welcome, and a minute or two afterward another light appeared at an open door, and my horse coming to an abrupt pause, I found that I was close upon the high pales, of which my friend the road-mender had made mention.

By the light held at arm's-length above her head, I saw a woman standing in the doorway; a tall, stout, commonplace

woman whose appearance dispelled all the romance of the situation at a glance. She came slowly down the path and opened the wicket-gate without a word, but I obeyed her silent motion for me to enter, for I was hungry and wet through, and ready to welcome the roughest shelter and coarsest food.

"Can I stable my horse here, and may 1 sit by your kitchen-fire till daylight?" I asked as courteously as I could. "How came you here?" she asked and I told her.

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She gave vent to an ungracious sound between a sigh and a grunt, and looked at me steadily, till I grew impatient and said: "Tell me at once if you mean to let me in, or to turn me from your door in this weather?"

"The weather isn't the worst thing about here. If I was you I'd push on, and not mind a drop o' rain. You're a gentleman, and our ways are not the ways of gentlefolks in this house. Our ways are rough, master-if I was you I'd push

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"It's my master back from market,' the woman explained hurriedly; "he'll be wroth at seeing a stranger. Go into that shed, sir, with your horse till I've got my master up to bed, then I'll give you a seat by the fire, and such supper as I have.'

She caught me by the arm, and half dragged me toward a big wood-shed, where I stood shivering, together with my shivering horse, for the next twenty min

utes.

At the end of that time she came back, and imposing silence on me by a motion of her hand to her lips, she whispered, "If you come along quiet now, I'll give you a bit of supper. My master's apt to come home a bit tired and teasy from market, but he's abed and asleep now, and if you're quiet you can bide by the kitchen hearth till the morning."

She dragged a bundle of hay down from a rack as she spoke, and seeing my horse fall to on this at once, I gladly followed her into the house.

It was a mean house, meanly furnished so far as I could see, but clean. The pas

sage, floored with bright red brick, was barren of everything save a coarse string mat, and the kitchen to which she led me had nothing in it but a big deal table, a settle, a few chairs, and a grandfather's clock.

Some brown bread and Dutch cheese, and a jug of scald-milk, stood ready for my consumption on the table, and I was preparing to partake of these delicacies. with a moorland appetite, when a savory odor of roast chicken, and daintily made and cooked pastry, was wafted in upon me from somewhere. I sniffed it in as only a hungry man can sniff, remarking at the same time, "You feed some one in this house better than you're going to feed me, my good woman. She colored up vividly. know that?" she asked. "I smell the fact," I rejoined laughingly. "You have a lodger, I suppose?"

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"How do you

She shook her head, and relapsed into stolidity. "No lodger here; what should bring any one here to lodge, master?"

She looked at me so earnestly as she made her disclaimer, that I in return looked at her earnestly for the first time. I have recorded the impression she had made upon me when first I caught sight of her at the wicket-gate in the light that fell from the upraised lamp. Now, looking at her with quickened interest, I saw that the head and face surmounting the tall, stout figure, had each a luxuriant beauty of their own, which redeemed their possessor from that limbo of commonplace" to which I had too hastily consigned her.

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The hair was rough and inartistically arranged, but it was curly and wavy, and of a ruddy gold color that on the head of a fashionable woman would have been of inestimable value. Her complexion was clear and good also, though the tint on her cheeks might have been a trifle too pronounced, but her face was redeemed from any trait of vulgarity by the depth and beauty of purple eyes which gleamed out winningly from between long, dark, curled lashes.

"I thought the trout streams would have brought you lodgers if you wanted them," I answered carelessly, and after gazing at me fixedly for a few moments to see if I meant inore than I said, she seemed satisfied to let the subject drop.

Taking up her little lamp and bending nearer to me, she whispered :

"You're welcome to a night's shelter, master, but if I was you I'd be on my road soon as the stars show forth. You'll find some more milk in that moog, and water in this pitcher, and that's all I can do for you-'cept advise you to be off soon as the stars show forth."

"Polly," shouted a voice sleepily from the upstairs region, and with a hasty nod to me the woman vanished, closing the kitchen-door behind her.

I took out a little warm woollen shawl that had been packed for me for the protection of my throat in cold weather, and wrapping it over my head I sat in the settle corner nearest to the fire, and resigned myself to thought-not to sleep.

Curiously rough and uncouth these moorland people were, I thought. With savory and appetizing viands ready cooked in their house, they had wilfully given me barely a crust of bread and cheese, and a glass of that scalded milk which would otherwise have been consigned to the pigs'-tub. What could their station be? The woman in dress and manner was not superior to a laborer's wife, yet the house was too large for a laborer's cottage. Probably as she spoke of her "husband having been to market," he was a small farmer. Yet his voice as he had called "Polly" at the back-door, curiously resembled another voice that I had heardsomewhere. Just now? or-long ago? Which was it?

I must have fallen asleep while indulging in these speculations, for I woke with a start. What woke me? In a moment I was quite on the alert. The lamp had gone out, and the fire was a black hole merely. What woke me?

Was it a footstep, a hand touching my foot as it rested on the settle, or a breath passing over my face? It had been one of these things, I could swear-but which? Involuntarily I sprang to my fcet, and beating my arms about me in a vague effort at self-protection, I made for the door as best I could in the darkness.

After revolving round the settle and the table, and violently assaulting the grandfather's clock, I reached the door, and after an ineffectual fumble or two, I laid hold of the handle and tugged vehemently at it. But the door withstood my most strenuous attempts to open it, and abrupt

ly though unwillingly I came to the conclusion that I was locked in.

Thoroughly awakened by this discovery, I groped my way to the window, determining to make my escape through it without waiting to go through the ceremony of saying good-by to my hostess. Just as I succeeded in unbarring and opening the window, I remembered my valise which I had left on the settle when

aroused. By the time I had got possession of this, a faint gray light stole in through the open window, and by its aid I made my way noiselessly to the woodshed, where I had left my horse. My horse was gone!

There was not another hut or shed within reach where they could have put him, so deeming that he had found the way to open the door, and had escaped on to the moor, I decided that the best course for me to take was to go in search of him. If I found him, and I should probably soon do so in the fast growing light, I argued, I could come back and inquire my way on to Princes Town. If I failed to find him, I must come back to seek other means of moving on, for my pedestrian powers were of the weakest. either case it was clearly needless for me to disturb the slumbering cottagers yet awhile.

-it do sometimes at night-and you took a nightmare for a noise ?"

"Not having digested the cheese may account for the noise, as you say, but how about the horse ?" I answered.

"Strayed!" she said concisely; and then I asked her if of her charity she would give me some breakfast, and ask her husband if he would drive me on to Princes Town.

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'My husband's gone to his work an hour agone, " she said, again favoring me with one of those earnest glances which had commanded my attention on the previous night.

"And what is his work?" I asked frivolously, for in reality I had no keen desire to gain information concerning the vocation of this unknown gentleman.

"It's hard enough," she muttered, turning away to spread the table-cloth.

Takes him much from home does, it ?" I said cheerfully, for I thought that her sullen demeanor denoted wifely discontent at her lord's absence, and this reminded me of how rapturously my own dear little wife at home in Bloomsbury would welcome me back to the safety of my westIn central home, after these wild experiences on Dartmoor.

I climbed up Heltor's highest point, and got a bird's-eye view of the country round, but I could not see anything of my horse. I called aloud upon him, but as I did not know his name, and he did not know my voice, I was not greatly surprised at his not responding. Finally, after wearying myself in vain for an hour or two, I made my way back to the lonely house inside the high palings.

It was broad, bright daylight now, and the woman was moving briskly about her household duties, singing as she worked. She looked surprised, and I thought vexed, when I walked in, and told me at once that she'd hoped I was well on to Princes Town by this time." But when I told her of my midnight disturbance and my missing horse, she looked grave and confused.

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My master and me never heard nothing in the night. To be sure, he sleeps heavy after market-days, but I'm a light sleeper, and I never heard footfall of man or beast. May hap the cheese lay heavy

"If you stayed here to see him before he went out you could have asked him that yourself, master," she said curtly but not uncivilly, and I took the speech and manner as indications of her desire to give all her attention to her household labors.

I ate my breakfast-which meal was a duplicate of my supper minus the cheese in silence, and then rose to go.

"You can't lend me a horse and cart, or drive me on to Princes Town or any part of the way, I suppose?'' I said, as I opened my valise to find a suitable coin to offer her in payment for the shelter and food she had given.

"I can't, master." She spoke impatiently, and was opening the door with the evident intention of speeding the parting guest, when I cried out :

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My purse is gone! I've been robbed of a ring. What's the meaning of this?" I added the last words in undisguised rage and dismay, as I found that not only my purse but my diamond ring was gone. "Don't ask me the meaning of it," said, dauntlessly advancing toward "How do I know that you had

she

me.

either purse or ring? You came here unasked, and I gave you the best I had, and you stole out of my house like a thief in the night, and now come back with a story about having been robbed of your purse and ring. Take care, master! My husband isn't at home I know as well as you do; but I'm no timid lone woman to be frightened by your bluster. You clear You clear out of this at once, or I'll help you out."' She need not have assured me that she was "no timid lone woman," for my declaration that I had "been tobbed" seemed to have transformed her into a virago of a most aggressive type.

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Nice thanks I should get from my husband if he knew that in return for my giving a stranger, who'd no right to ask it, shelter from the weather for the night, his house got a bad name, and his wife was as good as called a thief," she vociferated; and when I expostulated, and attempted to protest that I really had been robbed-though I didn't for an instant suspect her of being guilty of the foul deed-she grew so loud and boisterous that I was glad at last to escape from her house and her tongue, and without a guide or any instruction, to try and make my way to some haunt of men.

After many a weary hour's walking, I knew not whither, I came to Princes Town, and there, to a police official summoned at my request by the landlord of the hotel, I told the story of my last night's lodging and my losses.

We must be back upon them without any delay with a couple of constables," he said, and presently I found myself in a dog-cart behind a fast horse, in company with three arms of the law, bowling rapidly back on the road I had recently traversed on foot, so far as I could remember it.

"As for Heltor," the constable said, "there's no beacon or hill of that name on Dartmoor, so far as I know. I think the hedger must have been in the swim, sir;" but 1 scoffed at this suggestion, avowing truthfully that it had never been my lot to see a more innocent or stupid yokel.

It was late in the afternoon when I managed to guide them to the lonely house inside the high palings. The same woman opened the door to us as had sped me stormily in the morning. She looked surprised when she saw my companions,

but neither alarmed nor annoyed, and the tone in which she called back to her husband, "Here, Dick, here's the gentleman I told you on, come back with the bobbies," was distinctly cheerful and amused. In a moment Dick himself came forward, awkward, but smiling and friendly. He seemed a cross between a farmer and a gamekeeper, I thought, judging from his leggings and brown velveteen coat.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, addressing the constable. "My missus has been telling me that when I went to bed last night, with a glass of hot grog inside me, she was silly enough to let a stranger in. You're he, I s'pose," he asked, abruptly turning to me.

I confessed my self at once, and he went on sneeringly :

"I've found your horse for you-'twas grazing quiet as a lamb not ten yards from my spinny. You're welcome to search for your watch, or whatever 'tis you've lost."

"I don't for a moment suspect your wife or you-" I stammered, but he broke in upon my apology with a coarse laugh, and bidding the policemen search and be quick about it, he went back to his supper.

They searched the house thoroughly, but though upstairs they found one or two things that seemed unaccountably out of place in that habitation, they did not, it is almost needless to say, find either my purse or my diamond ring. I left the house firmly believing that I should never gain any clew to their disappearance, or cast eyes upon the master or the mistress of that lonely house again.

Before 1 parted with the policemen, and took my solitary way on my regained horse again, I heard one man say to the other, "Chap don't look much fit for such a bedroom as that, does he ?"

"No! and he don't look much as if a light overcoat was the thing he'd go to market in. But lor, bless you! these fellows that go about the country horse-dealing, pick up notions from their betters."

"Is that man a horse-dealer?" I asked, and they told me "a sort of one." He owned a number of Dartmoor ponies, and made a pretty penny by them at South Brent Fair every year.

"That's where I've seen him, and I've always heard he never came about here till about Brent Fair time," the other man said indifferently. Then they bid me good-day,

and we went on our respective ways, for I had decided not to go back to Princes Town, but to make my way to a nearer railway station, at which by leaving my horse in pawn, I might raise funds to carry me back to town.

As I rode along, "Dick's" resemblance to some one I had seen very lately haunted me, but it was not till I had been some hours in the train that I grasped the fleeting faney, and held it tightly till my memory verified it.

"Dick" and my stupid informant the "hedger" were either twins-or one!

Two years passed away, and though I had communicated my suspicions to the local police, nothing had come of their efforts to identify my men, or recover my lost property. The lonely house was lonelier than ever, I heard, by reason of being uninhabited, and no trace could be found of the gentleman who had accosted me in the livery-stable yard, of the hedger who had laid down his pickaxe in order to laboriously misdirect me, or of "Dick," the owner of the Dartmoor ponies.

I had almost forgotten my adventure, never giving a thought to it indeed, save on those occasions when my wife sadly bemoaned the loss of that fine diamond ring which she had always declared ought to have adorned her finger.

Ascot was near at hand; and dining one night with the one friend in our circle who drove a drag, and had a couple of teams of good horses, the conversation turned on the various ways in which we were going.

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Gardens Terrace, and give dear little dinners, and that's about all I can tell you about them."

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Willoughby's an awfully clever fellow," our host took up the strain of praise enthusiastically, "a first-rate mimicwould run Corney Grain or George Grossmith hard if he went in for that kind of thing in public."

"I've heard that said of several other fellows," I remarked, "and I've generally found that I should be rather sorry for them if they did go in for that kind of thing in public."

"Oh! but Mr. Willoughby really is clever; quite as good as a professional," the lady of the house said eagerly. "You should see him flap his arms like wings, and cluck and call like a hen—”

"I think he's better as the obliging man at the picnic, who mixes the salad with champagne, and pours out a brimmer of Lucca oil for the local beauty to drink," some one else chimed in.

"Undoubtedly his best thing is the west-country peasant," our host said decidedly, "but you must meet him at dinner here one night, Mrs. Elliot, he won't have scope enough on the top of the drag."

There was a little more conversation about him, all of which went to prove that Mr. Frank Willoughby was one of those genial geniuses who are pronounced to be "decided acquisitions to every circle," and when we went home that night my wife and I congratulated ourselves and each other on the opportunity so soon to be given us of "knowing the Willoughbys."

As I mounted the drag on the Ascot day, I saw that the box seat was occupied by a lovely young woman in a dress, the sublime simplicity of which must have cost her husband about as much as I allow my wife to dress on for the whole year. But the wearer of the dress was lovely enough to deserve anything she desired, and when I was introduced to her, and found she was Mrs. Frank Willoughby, I looked round with something like envy in my usually well-regulated married heart, for the happy man who owned her.

As my eyes travelled over three or four unknown faces and forins, they fell upon a white, well-formed strong hand, on the fourth or little finger of which sparkled !

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