Mr. Tuke sniggered with amusement.
“Preserve the man!” he cried. “But I understand, sir; and appreciate the kind of welcome like to be extended to an absentee landlord.”
For a moment the stranger seemed at a loss for speech. Then suddenly he turned upon the other, with a strained smile on his lips and his nostrils in a lively state of convulsion.
“You must pardon me,” he said. “I know the house, which hath been so long untenanted, that the fact of a claimant to its wildernesses appearing fills me with a sense of the abnormal.”
He trailed his rod, staring at the intruder.
“So you own ‘Delsrop?’” said he, with a musing hand caressing his stubble. “I suppose you know—now I suppose you know the place is reputed to be haunted?”
Mr. Tuke was growing impatient.
“Can you direct me thither?” he said curtly.
“Surely, sir,”—a lean smile creased the leathery skin of his cheeks. “You have only to follow the road you left. Over the crest of the first slope you will pass a tavern—the ‘Dog and Duck.’ The gates of ‘Delsrop’ break a plantation of firs, three miles beyond.”
The baronet expressed his thanks briefly, and stalked away. His informant looked an unsavoury piece of goods, in all truth, and he was growing conscious of a sense of weariness that inclined him to resent undue eccentricity.