Through the still boughs the sunlight fell, as it seemed to me, in little molten streams, and I pushed back my chair still deeper into the shadow of the elm.

Even there it was not cool, but at any rate the contrast to the glaring close-cropped lawn was welcome.

I stared up through the listless, delicate leaves into a sky of Mediterranean blue. Surely, it was the hottest day of summer—of memory.

The flowers with which my little garden is so profusely peopled hung languorously above the borders, and the hum of a binder in the neighbouring wheat field seemed an invitation to siesta.

Down sunny paths, I dropped into oblivion.

A touch awoke me, but my eyes were held tight beneath a pair of cool hands.

"Good gracious," I gasped. "Bless my——"

Tommy laughed and sauntered into view.

"You were making a beastly row," he observed, frankly. "I thought it was a thunderstorm."

I looked at him with envious eyes.

His sole attire consisted of a striped blazer and a pair of knickerbockers. He was crowned in a battered wide-awake hat, and from this to the tips of his brown toes he looked buoyant and cool despite the tan on his chest and legs.

He deposited the rest of his garments and a towel upon the grass, and sprawled contentedly beside them.

"It was so jolly hot that I didn't bother about dressing," he observed, lazily.

Then he sat up quickly.

"I say; you don't mind, do you? it's awful slack of me to come round here like this."

"Not a bit," said I, as my thoughts fled back to the days when I also was lean and springy, and blissfully contemptuous of changes in the weather.

Ah, well-a-day—well-a-day!

Linger the dreams of the golden days—
They were bright, though they fled so soon,
Rosy they gleamed in the early rays
Of the sun, that dispelled them at noon.

The joys of reminiscence are mellow, but at times they may become a little soporific—I awoke with a start.

"Whoo—ee."

It was a whistle, low and penetrating, and would seem to have risen from the wood beyond the stream.

I noticed that Tommy was alert and listening.

"Whoo—ee."

Again it rose, with something of caution in its tone, but a spice of daring in the higher note of its conclusion.

I watched Tommy, idly, with half-closed eyes.

He was performing a rapid toilet.

Presently he looked up at me from his shoe-laces.

"I taught her that whistle," he observed, complacently.

"Whom?" I asked.

"Why, Madge—Madge Chantrey," he said.

"You seem to have found an apt pupil."

"Rather."

"But I hope," I spoke severely, "I trust, Tommy, that you haven't taught her to play truant."

He looked at me, cheekily; then he vanished through the gate.

"Happy dreams," he said, "and, I say, don't snore quite so loudly, you know."

And I heard him singing as he ran through the wood.

Said Madge, from the first stile, on the right:

"I managed it beautifully; she was reading some of those stupid rhymes by the poet—only I oughtn't to call them names, because he's a friend of yours—and I watched her getting sleepier and sleepier, and then I came through the little gate behind the greenhouse and simply ran all the way, and, I expect, she's fast asleep, and I wonder why grown-up people always go to sleep in the very best part of all the day."

"I think it's their indigestions, you know," said Tommy thoughtfully.

"But they never eat anything all day—only huge big feeds at night."

"I think everybody's a little sleepy after lunch."

"I'm not."

"Not after two helps of jam roll?"

"How do you know I had two helps?"

"Never mind," said Tommy, then.

"See that spadger," he cried suddenly.

"Got him, no—missed him, by Jove."

The sparrow was twittering, mockingly, behind the hedge, and a bright-eyed rabbit scuttled into safety.

"Let's go through the park," cried Tommy.

"I'll show you a ripping little path, right by the house, where there's a cave I made before—no one knows it but father and I, an' you can go right by it, an' never see it. Come on."

They scrambled over the iron railings that bound the neat, though modest, domain surrounding Camslove Grange. Through the tall tree trunks they could see the old house with its rough battlements and extended wings. In front of it the trim lawns sloped down to the stream, while behind, the Italian garden was cut out of a wild tangle of shrubs and brushwood.

Into this Tommy plunged, with the unerring steps of long acquaintance, holding back the branches, as Madge followed close upon his heels.

Once he turned, and looked back eagerly into her eyes.

"We're just by the path now—Isn't it grand?"

"Rather," she said.

Presently, with much labour, they reached a microscopical track through the underwood.

"There," observed Tommy, with the proud air of a proprietor, "Didn't I tell you?"

"No one could possibly find it, I should think," said Madge.

"Rather not. Let's go to the cave."

Followed some further scrambling, and Tommy drew back the bushes triumphantly.

"See—" he began, but the words died upon his lips, for there, standing all unabashed upon this sacred ground, was a boy about his own age.

Tommy stammered and grew silent, looking amazedly at the stranger. He was a pale boy with dark eyes, and a Jewish nose.

"You are trespassing," he said coolly.

Tommy gasped.

"Who—who are you?" he asked at last.

"I tell you you are trespassing."

Tommy flushed.

"I'm not," he said. "I—I belong here."

The other boy gave a shout.

"Father," he cried, "Here's some trespassers."

Tommy stood his ground, surveying the intruder with some contempt, while Madge wide-eyed held his arm.

There were footsteps through the bushes, and a tall stout man in a panama hat came into view.

"Hullo," he said, "This is private property, you know."

Tommy looked at him gravely.

"I don't understand—I—I belong here, you know."

The big man smiled.

"You're a native, are you?" he said cheerfully. "Well, you're a pretty healthy looking specimen—but this place here is mine—for the time, at any rate."

"It was my father's," said Tommy, with a strange huskiness in his throat.

"Don't know anything about that—got it from the agents for six years—like to see the deed, heh?" and he chuckled, a little ponderously.

Tommy looked downcast and hesitant, and the big man turned to his son.

"Well, well," he said, "I guess they'll know better next time. Take 'em down the drive, Ernie, and show 'em out decently."

The three walked silently down the old avenue.

At the gate, the pale boy turned to Tommy.

"Back my father's got more money than yours," he said.

Tommy's eyes swept him with a look of profound contempt, but a lump in his throat forbade retort, and he turned away silent.

Madge, dear little woman, saw the sorrow in his eyes, and held her peace, picking flowers from the bank as they walked slowly down the path.

On a green spray a little way ahead a bird was singing full-throated and joyous, but to Tommy its music was mockery.

He took a long aim and brought the little songster, warm and quivering, on to the pathway in front of them.

As they came to it he kicked it aside, but Madge, stooping, lifted it from the long grass and hid it, quite dead, in her frock.

The tears had risen to her eyes, and she was on the point of challenging this seemingly wanton cruelty.

But there was something in Tommy's face that her eyes were quick to notice, and she was silent.

Thus is tact so largely a matter of instinct.

And, in a minute, Tommy turned to her.

"I—I should jolly well like to—to kill that chap," he said.

Madge said nothing, fondling the warm little body that she held beneath her pinafore.

As they turned the corner of the hedge, they came into the full flood of the sunlight over the meadows, and Tommy smiled.

"I say, I'm awfully sorry we should have got turned out like that, Madge, but I—I didn't know there was somebody else in there—an' that I wasn't to go there, an' that."

"Never mind," said Madge, "let's come up home, and I'll show you my cave—I've got one, too. It's not so good as yours, of course, because you're a boy, but I think it's very pretty all the same, and it's almost as hard to get at."