Scarcely in one instance out of a hundred did the actual owners of property miss the trees sufficiently to ask what had become of them.  So long as the game was all right, they paid little heed to the rest.  The partridges and the pheasants thrived, and so did Mr. Oliver Leach.  He enjoyed, however, the greatest unpopularity of any man in the neighbourhood, which was some small comfort to those who believed in the laws of compensation and justice.  Bainton was his particular enemy for one, and Bainton’s master, John Walden, for another.  His long-practised ‘knavish tricks’ and the malicious delight he took in trying to destroy or disfigure the sylvan beauty of the landscape by his brutish ignorance of the art of forestry, combined with his own personal greed, were beginning to be well-known in St. Rest, and it is very certain that on May-morning when the youngsters of the village were abroad and, to a great extent, had it all their own way, (aided and abetted in that way by the recognised authority of the place, the minister himself,) he would never have dared to show his hard face and stiffly upright figure anywhere, lest he should be unmercifully ‘guyed’ without a chance of rescue or appeal.

With the disappearance of the Maypole into the further meadow, Bainton likewise disappeared on his round of duty, which, as he had declared, moved him ‘in sundry places,’ and for a little while the dove-like spirit of Spring brooded in restful silence over the quiet orchard and garden.

The singing of the May-day children had now grown so faint and far as to be scarcely audible,—­and the call of the cuckoo shrilling above the plaintive murmur of the wood pigeons, soon absorbed even the echo of the young human voices passing away.  A light breeze stirred the tender green grass, shaking down a shower of pink almond bloom as it swept fan-like through the luminous air,—­a skylark half lost in the brilliant blue, began to descend earthwards, flinging out a sparkling fountain of music with every quiver of his jewel-like wings, and away in the sheltered shade of a small hazel copse, the faint fluty notes of a nightingale trembled with a mysterious sweetness suggestive of evening, when the song should be full.

More than an hour elapsed, and no living being entered the seclusion of the parson’s garden save Nebbie, the parson’s rough Aberdeen terrier, who, appearing suddenly at the open study-window, sniffed at the fair prospect for a moment, and then, stepping out with a leisurely air of proprietorship lay down on the grass in the full sunshine.  A wise-looking dog was Nebbie,—­though few would have thought that his full name was Nebuchadnezzar.  Only the Reverend John knew that.  Nebbie was perfectly aware that the children had come with the Maypole, and that his master had accompanied them to the big meadow.  Nebbie also knew that presently that same master of his would return again to make the circuit of the garden in the company of Bainton, according