It seems it was sultry weather, piping hot; the steed tormented into frenzy with gad-flies, long past being roadworthy; but safety and the interest of the house he rode for were incompatible things; a fall in serge cloth was expected; and a mad entrance they made of it.

Boy So merrily piping.

But it was not this that had roused him, he thought as he lay blinking drowsily,nor the black-bird piping so wonderfully in the apple-tree outside,a very inquisitive apple-tree that had writhed, and contorted itself most un-naturally in its efforts to peep in at the window;therefore Bellew fell to wondering, sleepily enough, what it could have been.