will be glad to be our banker."

"One moment, Miss Christie," said Dick lightly, as his thumb and finger
relaxed in his waistcoat pocket over the only piece of money in the
world that had remained to him after his extravagant purchase of
Christie's saffrona rose, "one moment: in this yer monetary transaction,
if you like, you are at liberty to use MY name."




CHAPTER VIII


As Christie and Jessie Carr looked from the windows of the coach, whose
dust-clogged wheels were slowly dragging them, as if reluctant, nearer
the last stage of their journey to Devil's Ford, they were conscious
of a change in the landscape, which they could not entirely charge upon
their changed feelings. The few bared open spaces on the upland, the
long stretch of rocky ridge near the summit, so vivid and so velvety
during their first journey, were now burnt and yellow; even the brief
openings in the forest were seared as if by a hot iron in the scorching
rays of a half year's sun. The pastoral slopes of the valley below were
cloaked in lustre-leather: the rare watercourses along the road had
faded from the waiting eye and ear; it seemed as if the long and dry
summer had even invaded the close-set ranks of pines, and had blown a
simoom breath through the densest woods, leaving its charred red ashes
on every leaf and spray along the tunnelled shade. As they leaned out
of the window and inhaled the half-dead spices of the evergreens, they
seemed to have entered the atmosphere of some exhausted passion--of some