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 indignant, Tracy coolly sarcastic, and O’Hara furious.

“Tare an’ ouns!” ejaculated my lord. “Where did , they all spring from?”

“I don’t quite know!” laughed Diana. “Sir Miles came a few minutes ago—the other gentleman came with Mr. Carstares.”

“Ay, I remember him—’tis Andrew, eh, Dick? Zounds! how he has grown! But what in the world are they all fighting over? Miles! Miles, I say!”

O’Hara wheeled round, surprised.

“Oho! Ye are up, are ye.” He crossed to his side. “Then sit down!”

“Since you are all so insistent, I will. How did you come here?”

O’Hara went round to the back of the couch to arrange a cushion beneath the hurt shoulder, and leaned his arms upon the back, looking down with a laugh in his eyes.

“Faith, I rode!”

“But how did you know? Where”

Twas all on account of that young rascal David,’ he said. “Molly fretted and fumed all the way to the Frasers, vowing the child would be neglected, and what not, and we’d not been in the house above an hour or so, when up she jumps and says she knows that something has happened at home, and nothing will suffice but that I must drive her back. We arrived just as Beauleigh was setting out. He told us the whole tale, and of course I had Blue Peter saddled in the twinkling of an eye and was off after ye. But, what with taking wrong turns and me horse not happening to be made of lightning, I couldn’t arrive until now.”

“You cannot have been so long after me,” said Jack. “For I wasted full half-an-hour outside here, trying to find an opening in the hedge for Jenny to get through. She is now stalled in a shed at the bottom of the lawn with my cloak over her. I’ll swear she’s thirsty, too.”