One Saturday afternoon Peggy had had a long scramble through copse and bracken, over fences and along stubble fields, and had filled her big basket almost full, somewhat to the detriment of her costume and fingers, and she was now working her way home along the edge of the pasture, picking as she went. She had climbed up the bank to reach a particularly luscious looking cluster from the long, trailing brambles overhead, when voices below attracted her attention, and, peeping through the hedge, she saw two horsemen riding slowly along in the bridle-path beneath. The first was a lean, spare man, with gray side-whiskers and a slight stoop, whose rather sporting attire accorded ill with his sharp, keen face; while the second, the one on the better horse, was stout and ruddy of countenance, a man who looked as though he would be more at home in a bar-parlour than in a drawing-room, and who held himself with a complacent air, as one who is satisfied both with the world in general and himself in particular.