I only struck them myself this afternoon, in a hairy tome called 'The Mulcaster Peerage'--and a whole page of sub-titles. They're from one of the epistles of the dear old sinner himself, written as though other people's money had never melted in his noble fist. I won't spoil it by misquotation. But you'll find that there was once an unjust steward, who robbed the wicked lord of this very vineyard, and then locked himself into his lodge, and committed suicide rather than face the fearful music!"

I did not look at Delavoye; but I felt his face glowing like a live coal close to mine.

"This road isn't marked," I said as though I had been simply buried in the plan.

"Naturally; it wasn't made. Would you like to see where it ran?"

"I shouldn't mind," I said with the same poor quality of indifference.

He took a bit of old picture-rod, which he kept for a ruler on his desk, and ran a pair of parallel lines in blue pencil from west to east. The top line came just under the factor's cottage.

"It's in this very road!" I exclaimed.

"Not only that," returned Delavoye, "but if you go by the scale, and pace the distance, you'll find that the Steward's Lodge was on the present site of the house with red blinds!"

And he turned away to fill another pipe, as though finely determined not to crow or glow in my face. But I did not feel myself an object for magnanimity.

"I thought it was only your ignoble kinsman, as you call him," I said, "who was to haunt and influence us all. If it's to be his man-servant, his maid-servant----

"Stop," cried Delavoye; "stop in time, my dear man, before you come to one or other of us! Can you seriously think it a mere coincidence that a thing like this should happen on the very spot where the very same thing has happened before?"

"I don't see why not."

"I had only the opposite idea to go upon, Gilly, and yet I found exactly what I expected to find. Was that a fluke?"

"Or a coincidence--call it what you like."

"Call it what _you_ like," retorted Delavoye with great good-humour. "But if the same sort of thing happens again, will it still be a coincidence 

 Prev. P 34/136 next