It was not often that Bessie, with the children alone, wandered so far afield.  But the day had beguiled them, and a furtive hope that Harry Musgrave might be coming to Beechhurst that way had given Bessie courage.  He had not been met, however, when it was time to turn their faces towards home.  The boys had their forest pony, and mounted him by turns.  It was Tom’s turn now, and Bessie was leading Jerry, and carrying the socks and boots of the other two in the skirt of her frock, gathered up in one hand.  She was a little subdued, a little downcast, it might be with fatigue and the sultry air, or it might be with her present disappointment; but beyond and above all wearied sensations was the jar of unsettledness that had come into her life, and perplexed and confused all its sweet simplicities.  She made no haste, but lingered, and let the children linger as they pleased.

The path by the river was not properly a bridle-path, but tourists for pleasure often lost their way in the forest, and emerged upon the roads unexpectedly from such delicious, devious solitudes.  Thus it befell to-day when two gentlemen on horseback overtook Bessie, where she had halted with Tom and the pony to let Jack and Willie come up.  They were drying their pink toes preparatory to putting on again their shoes and stockings as the strangers rode by.

“Is this the way to Beechhurst, my little gypsy?” quoth the elder of the two, drawing rein for a moment.

Bessie looked up with a sunburnt face under her loose fair hair.  “Yes, sir,” said she.  Then a sudden intelligence gleamed in her eyes, her cheeks blazed more hotly, and she thought to herself, “It is my grandfather!”

The gentlemen proceeded some hundred paces in silence, and then the one whom Bessie suspected as her grandfather said to the other, “Short, that is the girl herself!  She has the true Fairfax face as it is painted in a score of our old portraits.”

“I believe you are right, sir.  Let us be certain—­let us ask her name,” proposed the lawyer.

Bessie’s little troop were now ready to march, and they set off at a run, heedless of her cry to stop a while behind the riders, “Else we shall be in the dust of their heels,” she said.  Lingering would not have saved her, however; for the strangers were evidently purposed to wait until she came up.  Jack was now taking his turn on Jerry, and Jerry with his head towards his stable wanted no leading or encouraging to go.  He was soon up with the gentlemen and in advance of them.  Next Tom and Willie trotted by and stood, hand-in-hand, gazing at the horses.  Bessie’s feet lagged as if leaden weights were tied to them, and her conscious air as she glanced in the face of the stranger who had addressed her before set at rest any remaining doubt of who she was.

“Are you Elizabeth Fairfax who lives with Mrs. Carnegie?” he asked in an abrupt voice—­the more abrupt and loud for a certain nervousness and agitation that arose in him at the sight of the child.