At this moment the iron gate leading into the woods close behind clanged suddenly, and with a jump that testified to his jangled nerves he looked out. It was Geoffrey, gun on shoulder, coming back to the house. Harry leaned out of the window.
"Come in here, Geoff," he said.
Geoffrey looked round.
"Halloo; have you been opening the old summerhouse?" he asked.
"Yes," said Harry, very deliberately, "I've been opening the old summerhouse."
Geoffrey handed his gun to the keeper, who was close behind him, and vaulted in through one of the open windows.
"Rare good morning we've had," he said. "You should have come, Harry. Why, you look queer! What's the matter?"
Harry had sat down in one of the garden chairs, and was leaning back, feeling suddenly faint.
"I've had the devil of a fright," he said. "I went gaily marching into the ice house by mistake, and only just stopped on the lip of the ice tank or the well—I don't know which it was. Either would probably have done."
"Lord! how can you be such an ass?" cried Geoffrey. "You knew that one of the two was an ice house, and yet you go whistling along out of the sunshine into pit-mirk, and never reflect that the chances are exactly even that next moment you will be in Kingdom Come."