“He isn’t old,” said Piers Evesham in sharp contradiction.  “He’s only seventy-four.  That’s not old for an Evesham.  He’ll go for another twenty years.  There’s a saying in our family that if we don’t die violently, we never die at all.”  He pulled himself up abruptly.  “I’ve given you my name and history.  Won’t you tell me yours?”

She hesitated momentarily.  “I am only the mother’s help at the Vicarage,” she said then.

“By Jove!  I don’t envy you.”  He looked at her with frank interest notwithstanding.  “I suppose you do it for a living,” he remarked.  “Personally, I’d sooner sweep a crossing than live in the same house with that mouthing parson.”

“Hush!” she said, but her lips smiled as she said it, a small smile that would not be denied.  “I must go in now.  Here you are!” She gave him back his whip.  “Good-bye!  Get home quick—­and change!”

He turned half-reluctantly; then paused.  “You might tell me your name anyway,” he said.

She had begun to move away, light-footed, swift as a bird.  She also paused.

“My name is Denys,” she said.

He put his hand to his cap again.  “Miss Denys?”

“No.  Mrs. Denys.  Good-bye!”

She was gone.  He heard the light feet running up the wet gravel drive and then the quick opening of a door.  It closed again immediately, with decision, and he stood alone in the wintry dusk.

Caesar crept to him and grovelled abjectly in the mud.  The young man stood motionless, staring at the Vicarage gates, a slight frown between his brows.  He was not tall, but he had the free pose of an athlete and the bearing of a prince.

Suddenly he glanced down at his cringing companion and broke into a laugh.  “Get up, Caesar, you fool!  And think yourself lucky that you’ve got any sound bones left!  You’d have been reduced to a jelly by this time if I’d had my way.”

He bent with careless good-nature, and patted the miscreant; then turned towards his horse.

“Poor old Pompey!  A shame to keep you standing!  All that brute’s fault.”  He swung himself into the saddle.  “By Jove, though, she’s got some pluck!” he said.  “I like a woman with pluck!”

He touched his animal with the spur, and in a moment they were speeding through the gathering dark at a brisk canter.  Pompey was as anxious to get home as was his master, and he needed no second urging.  He scarcely waited to get within the gates of the Park before he gathered himself together and went like the wind.  His rider lay forward in the saddle and yelled encouragement like a wild Indian.  Caesar raced behind them like a hare.

The mad trio went like a flash past old Marshall the head-keeper who stood gun on shoulder at the gate of his lodge and looked after them with stern disapproval.

“Drat the boy!  What’s he want to ride hell-for-leather like that for?” he grumbled.  “He’ll go and kill himself one of these days as his father did before him.”