His imagination, acutely vivid and rather childish for his years, insisted that this was a desperate business, demanding caution and woodcraft of no mean order. Indians, painted and feathered, slipped like shadows from bole to hollow; a tiny pool amid the bracken was the nightly drinking-place of beasts a hunter of his experience could recognise from their spoor.... A squirrel, low down on an overhanging branch, suddenly sent his heart into his mouth as it broke into a scolding chatter at his approach.
The trees grew fewer and gave glimpses of great stretches of lawn, vivid green in the brilliant sunlight. Beyond, entrenched behind flower-beds and a stone balustraded terrace, stood the great house. Had Cornelius James but known it, romance clustered thicker round those hoary buildings than any he could imagine in his woodland transports.
Monks had chanted matins and vespers in the vaulted chapel whose roof caught his eye amid the greenery. Brave gentlemen had died at the end of the alley-way bordered by yew hedges on the right—fought and died for the light love of a lady. Dawn had paled candles behind the deep-set oriel windows and seen a fortune, aye, ten fortunes, change hands across a little baize-covered table. The births of great men and famous women and their deaths had the old house known for twenty generations, and once (so the chroniclers record) murder most foul.
But the boy was less concerned with the house than the gleam of a lake beyond the lawns. Water always called him, were it sea or river or puddle by the roadside.
He emerged from the park, a hot, dishevelled, breathless little figure, and set off at a trot to where the ornamental lake was situated. A stream meandered down to the head of the lake, and following it he came presently to the stone coping (it had been a fish pond in monastic days) and espied a tall figure, lazily whipping the surface of the lake with a trout rod. It was Graeme Jakes, and so intent was he upon his occupation that not until Cornelius James panted to his side did he turn his head.
"Hullo, sprite!" he said. "Where have you sprung from?"
"I've got a letter," gasped Cornelius James, "about our coming to tea with you."
"Oh," said the prospective host, and then in a tone of anxiety that would have astonished his step-sister: "You are coming, aren't you?"
"Rather," said the boy. "We're all coming." He held out the letter. "This is for Lady Manners. Shall I go in and give it to her?"
"That's all right," said Graeme, possessing himself of the missive. "I'll take it."