“Yes, for I must ride to Gleys this morning.”
“Shan’t be sorry to miss thee for a while. Makes me feel so shy—this cleanliness.” So, promising to be back by nightfall, I went presently to saddle Molly: and following Joan’s directions and her warnings against quags and pitfalls, was soon riding south across the moor and well on my road to the House of Gleys.
My way leading me by Braddock Down, I turned aside for a while to examine the ground of the late fight (tho’ by now little was to be seen but a piece of earthwork left unfinish’d by the rebels, and the fresh mounds where the dead were laid); and so ’twas high noon—and a dull, cheerless day—before the hills broke and let me have sight of the sea. Nor, till the noise of the surf was in my ears, did I mark the chimneys and naked grey walls of the house I was bound for.
’Twas a gloomy, savage pile of granite, perch’d at the extremity of a narrow neck of land, where every wind might sweep it, and the waves beat on three sides the cliff below. The tide was now at the full, almost, and the spray flying in my face, as we crossed the head of a small beach, forded a stream, and scrambled up the rough road to the entrance gate.
A thin line of smoke blown level from one chimney was all the sign of life in the building: for the narrow lights of the upper story were mostly shuttered, and the lower floor was hid from me by a high wall enclosing a courtlage in front. One stunted ash, with boughs tortured and bent toward the mainland, stood by the gate, which was lock’d. A smaller door, also lock’d, was let into the gate, and in this again a shuttered iron grating. Hard by, dangled a rusty bell-pull, at which I tugg’d sturdily.
On this, a crack’d bell sounded, far in the house, and scared a flock of starlings out of a disused chimney. Their cries died away presently, and left no sound but that of the gulls wailing about the cliff at my feet. This was all the answer I won.
I rang again, and a third time: and now at last came the sound of footsteps shuffling across the court within. The shutter of the grating was slipp’d back, and a voice, crack’d as the bell, asked my business.
“To see Master Hannibal Tingcomb,” answered I. “Thy name?”
“He shall hear it in time. Say that I come on business concerning the estate.”
The voice mutter’d something, and the footsteps went back. I had been kicking my heels there for twenty minutes or more when they returned, and the voice repeated the question—