Hard Pressed by Fred M. White — Read

Interest as well as sympathy lit up Alice Carden's eyes. She looked with something more than curiosity at the well-set-up young man who came striding across the turf towards them. May reached over and laid an impressive hand upon her friend's arm.

"I am not sure I meant to tell you so much," she whispered. "I spoke on the spur of the moment. Harry came back to England unexpectedly a little time ago, and I met him by accident in London. It was a bit romantic in its way, but I'll tell you about that later. He came down here to his old home to get some of his belongings, and, to his surprise, nobody recognized him. I was the only person who knew him, excepting an old stud-groom who had been in the employ of the Fieldens for the last fifty years. When he found that no one knew him, he thought he might procure some congenial occupation in his own neighbourhood. It was part of the same romance that he should obtain this employment at the hands of Mr. Copley. But, of course, he does not pass in his own name. Please to recollect that he is Mr. Field. Now, my dear, you have the whole story in a nutshell. It is like the plot of a novel.