“What is to be done now?” the vicar said.
“I will,” returned Mr Musgrave quietly, “go to the Hall myself, and bring Diogenes back.”
“Well, I rather wonder you didn’t do that before.”
Mr Musgrave wondered also. The idea had not, as a matter of fact, presented itself to him until the delicacy of entrusting the mission to a third person had been pointed out. Now that it had presented itself it occurred to him not only as the proper course to pursue, but the more agreeable. He therefore scattered the fragments of his note to the winds of heaven, and set forth on his walk to the Hall.
It was dusk when he started; when he arrived at the gates and passed through, the dusk appeared to deepen perceptibly, and as he pursued his way, as Robert had done, along the avenue beneath the green archway of interlacing boughs, it seemed to him that night descended abruptly and dispersed the last lingering gleams of departing day.
Mr Musgrave was not superstitious, and his thoughts, unlike his footsteps, did not follow in the direction which Robert’s had taken. Nothing was farther from his mind at the moment than ghosts; therefore when an ungainly-looking object pounded towards him in the gloom, instead of his imagination playing him tricks, he recognised immediately the clumsy, familiar figure of Diogenes, even before Diogenes rushed at him with a joyous bark of welcome. Mr Musgrave’s thought on the spur of the moment was to secure Diogenes and take him home; but, as though suspicious of his motives in grabbing at his collar, Diogenes broke away from the controlling hand, and dived hastily for cover, making for some bushes of rhododendrons, into which Mr Musgrave plunged recklessly in pursuit, so intent on the capture of his elusive trust that he failed to note the figure of a man, which, bearing in sight as he broke into the bushes, hurried forward in hot pursuit, and, following close upon his heels, seized him with a pair of strong arms and dragged him, choking and amazed, into the open path.
“Musgrave!” said Mr Chadwick. He released Mr Musgrave’s collar, and stood back and stared at his captive. “What, in the name of fortune, are you up to?”
Mr Musgrave inserted two fingers inside his collar, felt his throat tenderly, and coughed.
“You need not have been so rough,” he complained.
“Upon my word, I mistook you for a tramp,” Mr Chadwick explained, laughing. “What on earth were you playing hide-and-seek in the bushes for? I begin to believe this path must be bewitched, by the extraordinary manner in which people using it behave. Have you been seeing ghosts too?”