"Then good-day t' ye, friends," answered Young Zeb, and turned the mare.
"Cl'k, Jessamy!" He rattled away down the lane.

"What an admirable youth!" murmured the stranger, falling back a pace
and gazing after the back of Zeb's head as it passed down the line of
the hedge. "What a messenger! He seems eaten up with desire to get you
a chest of drawers that shall be wholly satisfying. But why do you
allow him to call you 'my dear'?"

"Because, I suppose, that's what I am," answered Ruby; "because I'm
goin' to marry him within the month."

"_Wh-e-e-w!_"

But, as a matter of fact, the stranger had known before asking.



CHAPTER V.


THE STRANGER DANCES IN ZEB'S SHOES.

It was close upon midnight, and in the big parlour at Sheba the courant,
having run through its normal stages of high punctilio, artificial ease,
zest, profuse perspiration, and supper, had reached the exact point when
Modesty Prowse could be surprised under the kissing-bush, and Old Zeb
wiped his spectacles, thrust his chair back, and pushed out his elbows
to make sure of room for the rendering of "Scarlet's my Colour."
These were tokens to be trusted by an observer who might go astray in