A SHAEP SPOETSMAN. 87 



later to find us quietly sitting on our horses 

 watching for them. 



"Ah ! I was wrong — made a mistake ! " Fear- 

 stone remarked rather sulkily, and one or two of 

 his companions looked somewhat unsympathetic 

 not to say secretly delighted, from which I 

 inferred that their host had been exercising some 

 of his arts upon them since they had been at the 

 Towers. 



'' I can't make out what you were driving 

 at," Flutterton innocently observed. But I had 

 an idea about it all. 



Fearstone knew that the gates which Flut- 

 terton had noticed had been lately put up, that 

 they were always kept shut, and that they were 

 too big to be jumped. He did not know, how- 

 ever, something else, namely, that while looking 

 for my birds in the morning at a point where my 

 friend's estate adjoined the forest, I had been 

 chatting to the earl's steward, and had said I 

 was going to hunt, which had put it into his 

 head that hounds might cross the forest ; and 

 that thereupon he had told the keeper to see 

 that the gates were left open. Fearstone had no 

 doubt supposed that, as usual, the gates were 

 closed, and that we should be stopped by them, 

 in which case there would have been nothing 

 for it but to return to the high-road, by the 



