open road bordered by thin trees all sloping away from the south west and the scene bore a strange resemblance to certain bits of dutch landscape which have been on the world s eye by and his school having explained to her that the wedding was put oflf and that she had come to stay one of s first acts was carefully to pack up the and case her wedding present from the baron the conditions of the gift were and she wished it to go back instantly perhaps in the of her bosom there a greater satisfaction with the reason for returning the present than she would have felt just then with a reason for keeping it the romantic adventures of a to send the article was difficult in the evening she wrapped herself up searched and found a veil that had been used by her grandmother in past years for of bees buried her face in it and forth with a heart till she drew near the of her god the baron she ventured only to the back door where she handed in the parcel addressed to him and quickly came away now it seems that during the day the baron had been unable to learn the result of his attempt to return in time for the event he had interrupted wishing for obvious reasons to avoid direct inquiry by messenger and being too to go far himself he could learn no particulars he was sitting in thought after a lonely dinner when the parcel failure was brought in the footman whose had been excited by the mode of its arrival peeped through the after closing the door to learn what the packet meant directly the baron had opened it he thrust out his feet vehemently from his chair and began cursing his conduct in bringing about such a disaster for the return of the not only no wedding that day but none to morrow or at any time i have done that innocent woman a great wrong he murmured deprived her of perhaps her opportunity of becoming mistress of a happy home x a considerable period of followed among all concerned nothing tended to the obscurity which veiled the life of the baron the position he occupied in the minds of the country folk around was one which combined the of a character with the deeds of a modem gentleman to this day whoever takes the trouble to go z the romantic adventures op a down to in lower and make inquiries will find existing there almost a superstitious feeling for the moody melancholy stranger who resided in the lodge some forty years ago whence he came whither he was going were alike unknown it was said that his mother had been an english lady of noble family who had married a foreigner not unheard of in circles where men pile up the heaps of strange achieved gold � that he had bom and educated in england taken abroad and so on but the facts of a life in such cases are of little account beside the aspect of a life and hence though doubtless the years of his existence contained their share of and homely the curtain which all this was never lifted to gratify such a theatre of spectators as those at therein lay his charm his life was a of which the central strokes only were drawn with any distinctness the away to a blank he might have been said to that solitary bird the the still lonely stream was his frequent haunt on its banks he would stand for hours with his rod looking into the water beholding the inhabitants with the eye of a philosopher and seeming to say bite or don t bite � it s all the same to me he was often mistaken for a ghost by children and for a willow by men when on their way home in the dusk they saw him motionless by some bank of the decline of day why did he come to fish near that was never explained as far as was he had no relatives near the fishing there was not good the society was decidedly meagre that he had committed some folly or hasty act that he had been accused of some crime thus rendering his seclusion from the world desirable for a while very well with his frequent melancholy but such as he was there he lived well sup the romantic adventures op a plied with fishing tackle and tenant of a furnished house just suited to the of such an eccentric being as he s father having privately ascertained that she was living with her grandmother and getting into no harm refrained from communicating with her in the hope of seeing her at his door it had of become known about that at the last moment refused to wed by herself from the house jim was pitied yet not pitied much for it was said that he ought not to have been so eager for a woman who had shown no anxiety for him and where was jim himself it must not be supposed that that had all this while withdrawn from mortal eye to tear his hair in silent indignation and despair he had in truth merely retired up the between the downs to his and the ancient above it and there after his first hours of natural he quietly waited for from the possibly but no arrived and then he meditated anew on the absorbing problem of her and how to set about another campaign for her conquest notwithstanding his late disastrous failure why had he failed to what was her strange conduct owing that was the thing which puzzled him he had made no advance in the riddle when one morning a stranger appeared on the down above him looking as if he had lost his way the man had a good deal of black 