not see; they ran like hounds, murmuring as they came in a terrible whining voice.  Then Jack understood that he could save Frank; he brought his gun to the shoulder, aimed it at the brown of the pack and drew the trigger.  A snap followed, and he discovered that he was unloaded; he groped in his cartridge-belt and found it empty....  He tore at his pockets, and found at last one cartridge; and as he dashed it into the open breach, his gun broke in half.  Simultaneously the quarry vanished over an edge of hill, and the pack followed, the leaders now not ten yards behind the flying figure in front.

Jack stood there, helpless and maddened.  Then he flung the broken pieces of his gun at the disappearing runners; sank down in the gloom, and broke out into that heart-shattering nightmare sobbing which shows that the limit has been reached.

He awoke, still sobbing—­certain that Frank was in deadly peril, if not already dead, and it was a few minutes before he dared to go to sleep once more.

CHAPTER II

(I)

The Rectory garden at Merefield was, obviously, this summer, the proper place to spend most of the day.  Certainly the house was cool—­it was one of those long, low, creeper-covered places that somehow suggest William IV. and crinolines (if it is a fact that those two institutions flourished together, as I think), with large, darkish rooms and wide, low staircases and tranquil-looking windows through which roses peep; but the shadow of the limes and the yews was cooler still.  A table stood almost permanently through those long, hot summer days in the place where Dick had sat with Jenny, and here the Rector and his daughter breakfasted, lunched and dined, day after day, for a really extraordinarily long period.

Jenny herself lived in the garden even more than her father; she got through the household business as quickly as possible after breakfast, and came out to do any small businesses that she could during the rest of the morning.  She wrote a few letters, read a few books, sewed a little, and, on the whole, presented a very domestic and amiable picture.  She visited poor people for an hour or so two or three days a week, and occasionally, when Lord Talgarth was well enough, rode out with him and her father after tea, through the woods, and sometimes with Lord Talgarth alone.

She suffered practically no pangs of conscience at all on the subject of Frank.  Her letter had been perfectly sincere, and she believed herself to have been exceedingly sensible. (It is, perhaps, one may observe, one of the most dangerous things in the world to think oneself sensible; it is even more dangerous than to be told so.) For the worst of it all was that she was quite right.  It was quite plain that she and Frank were not suited to one another; that she had looked upon that particular quality in him which burst out in the bread-and-butter incident, the leaving of Cambridge, the going to prison, and so forth, as accidental to his character, whereas it was essential.  It was also quite certain that it was the apotheosis of common-sense for her to recognize that, to say so, and to break off the engagement.