And now the burly and broad-shouldered host of all these people called on them to unanimously forgive the minister for the injury he had unintentionally done them in the morning.

“It wasn’t the good man’s fault at all; it was Waveney’s,” Sir Hugh continued, as he got hold of a spoon and delved it into a pigeon-pie.  “I assure you it was a practical joke that Captain Waveney played upon the whole of you.  He gave the minister a little hint—­and the thing was done.”

Lord Fareborough glared at the culprit as if he expected to see the heavens fall upon him; but Lady Adela observed, with a touch of dignity,

“I hope I know Captain Waveney well enough not to believe that he would turn any religious service into a practical joke.”

“I hope so, too, Lady Adela,” the dapper little captain instantly replied, though without any great embarrassment.  “That’s hardly my line of country.  But there’s another thing:  Sir Hugh may ask you to believe anything, but he won’t make you believe that I could trifle with such a sacred subject as the morning of the Twelfth.”

“Faith, you’re right there, Waveney,” Sir Hugh said, with a laugh.  “Well, we’ve done our best to make up for the loss of time.  And now, Rose, if you want to have your sketch, fire away!  I’m going to light a pipe; but, mind, we sha’n’t stop here very long.  You’d better put in us men at once; and then you can draw in the ladies and the game and the luncheon at your leisure.”

“And if you want me, Rose,” Honnor Cunyngham said, “please put me in at once, too; for I’m going away back to the Horseshoe Pool.”

“My dear child,” Lady Adela protested, “you’ll break your neck some day going down that Bad Step.  I really think Hugh should have a windlass at the top and let people down by a rope.  Now look alive, Rose, and get your sketch begun; I can see the gentlemen are all impatient to be off.  And mind you have Mr. Moore rolling up a cigarette:  it won’t be natural otherwise.”

She was right about one thing, anyway; the sportsmen were undoubtedly impatient to be off; and it is to be feared that Lady Rosamund’s sketch suffered by the restlessness of her models.  Indeed, after a very little while, Lord Fareborough indignantly rose, and declared he never had known a Twelfth of August so shamelessly sacrificed.  He, for one, would have no more of it.  He called to the under-keeper to bring along the gillies and the dogs; whereupon Lady Rosamund, who had a temper not quite in consonance with the calm and statuesque beauty of her features, closed her sketch-book and threw it aside, saying she would make the drawing some other day when she found the gentlemen a little more considerate.

And soon Lionel and his two companions were at their brisk occupation again; though ever and anon his thoughts would go wandering away to the Horseshoe Pool, and his fancy was picturing the fisher-maiden on the summit of a great gray boulder, while a fifteen-pounder raced and chased in the black deeps below.  Sometimes he tried to get a glimpse of the upper stretches of the river; but this was a dangerous trick when all his attention was demanded by the work on hand.  In any case his scrutiny of those far regions was unavailing; for the Horseshoe Pool is on the Geinig, a tributary of the Aivron, and not visible from the hill-slopes along which they were now shooting.