"It is wonderful," said George. "I never saw it at all out before. I
wonder," he added, with a sigh, "if I shall ever have the fingering of
it."

"Yes," she said, with a strange look of her large eyes, "if you
continue to be guided by me, you shall. I tell you so, and I _never_
make mistakes. Hush, something is going to happen. What is it?"

The dinner had come to an end, and in accordance with the old-
fashioned custom the cloth had been removed, leaving bare an ancient
table of polished oak nearly forty feet in length, and composed of
slabs of timber a good two inches thick.

When the wine had been handed round, the old squire motioned to the
servants to leave the room, and then, having first whispered something
in the ear of Miss Lee that caused her to turn very red, he slowly
rose to his feet in the midst of a dead silence.

"Look at your cousin's face," whispered Mrs. Bellamy. George looked;
it was ghastly pale, and the black eyes were gleaming like polished
jet against white paper.

"Friends and neighbours, amongst whom or amongst whose fathers I have
lived for so many years," began the speaker, whose voice, soft as it
was, filled the great hall with ease, "it was, if tradition does not
lie, in this very room and at this very table that the only Caresfoot
who ever made an after-dinner speech of his own accord, delivered
himself of his burden. That man was my ancestor in the eighth degree,
old yeoman Caresfoot, and the occasion of his speech was to him a very