dark spots floated up from the marsh and went swinging over his head.
Crack! Crack! Down sheered the black spots, tumbling earthward out of
the sky.

"Duck," said Ferrall; "a double for Stephen. Lord Harry! how that man
can shoot! Isn't it a pity that--"

He said no more; his pretty wife astride her thoroughbred sat silent,
grey eyes fixed on the distant figures of Sylvia Landis and Siward, now
shoulder deep in the reeds.

"Was it--very bad last night?" she asked in a low voice.

Ferrall shrugged. "He was not offensive; he walked steadily enough
up-stairs. When I went into his room he lay on the bed as if he'd been
struck by lightning. And yet--you see how he is this morning?"

"After a while," his wife said, "it is going to alter him some
day--dreadfully--isn't it, Kemp?"

"You mean--like Mortimer?"

"Yes--only Leroy was always a pig."

As they turned their horses toward the high-road Mrs. Ferrall said: "Do
you know why Sylvia isn't shooting with Howard?"

"No," replied her husband indifferently; "do you?"

"No." She looked out across the sunlit ocean, grave grey eyes