The Borough Treasurer

As for himself, his thoughts went beyond Highmarket—to the place amongst the hills which he had never seen. After Harborough's due acquittal Brereton, having discharged his task, had gone back to London. But ever since then he had kept up a regular correspondence with Avice, and he knew all the details of the new life which had opened up for her and her father with the coming of Mr. Wraythwaite of Wraye. Her letters were full of vivid descriptions of Wraye itself, and of the steward's house in which she and Harborough—now appointed steward and agent to his foster-brother's estate—had taken up their residence. She had a gift of description, and Brereton had gained a good notion of Wraye from her letters—an ancient and romantic place, set amongst the wild hills of the Border, lonely amidst the moors, and commanding wide views of river and sea. It was evidently the sort of place in which a lover of open spaces, such as he knew Avice to be, could live an ideal life. But Brereton had travelled down from London on purpose to ask her to leave it.

He had come at last on a sudden impulse, unknown to any one, and therefore unexpected. Leaving his bag at the little station in the valley at which he left the train just as the sun was setting behind the surrounding hills, he walked quickly up a winding road between groves of fir and pine towards the great grey house which he knew must be the place into which the man from Australia had so recently come under romantic circumstances. At the top of a low hill he paused and looked about him, recognizing the scenes from the descriptions which Avice had given him in her letters. There was Wraye itself—a big, old-world place, set amongst trees at the top of a long park-like expanse of falling ground; hills at the back, the sea in the far distance. The ruins of an ancient tower stood near the house; still nearer to Brereton, in an old-fashioned flower garden, formed by cutting out a plateau on the hillside, stood a smaller house which he knew—also from previous description—to be the steward's. He looked long at this before he went nearer to it, hoping to catch the flutter of a gown amongst the rose-trees already bright with bloom. And at last, passing through the rose-trees he went to the stone porch and knocked—and was half-afraid lest Avice herself should open the door to him. Instead, came; a strapping, redcheeked North-country lass who stared at this evident traveller from far-off parts before she found her tongue. No—Miss Avice wasn't in, she was down the garden, at the far end.

Brereton hastened down the garden; turned a corner; they met unexpectedly. Equally unexpected, too, was the manner of their meeting. For these two had been in love with each other from an early stage of their acquaintance, and it seemed only natural now that when at last they touched hands, hand should stay in hand. And when two young people hold each other's hands, especially on a Springtide evening, and under the most romantic circumstances and surroundings, lips are apt to say more than tongues—which is as much as to say that without further preface these two expressed all they had to say in their first kiss.

Nevertheless, Brereton found his tongue at last. For when he had taken a long and searching look at the girl and had found in her eyes what he sought, he turned and looked at wood, hill, sky, and sea.

"This is all as you described it" he said, with his arm round her, "and yet the first real thing I have to say to you now that I am here is—to ask you to leave it!"

She smiled at that and again put her hand in his.

"But—we shall come back to it now and then—together!" she said.

THE END