CHAPTER XIII
THE COMING OF LITTLE THUNDER
The afternoon was waning; against the golden western sky the old manor house loomed in solemn majesty, the fields and forests emphasizing its isolation in the darkening hour of sunset, as a coach, with jaded horses, passed through the avenue of trees and approached the broad portico. A great string of trailing vine had been torn from the walls by the wind and now waved mournfully to and fro with no hand to adjust it. In the rear was a huge-timbered barn, the door of which was unfastened, swinging on its rusty hinges with a creaking and moaning sound.
As gaily as in the days when the periwigged coachman had driven the elaborate equipage of the early patroons through the wrought-iron gate this modern descendant entered the historic portals, not to be met, however, by servitors in knee breeches at the front door, but by the solitary care-taker who appeared on the portico in considerable disorder and evident state of excitement, accompanied by the shaggy dog, Oloffe.
“The deputies shot two of the tenants to-day,” hurriedly exclaimed the guardian of the place, without noticing Mauville’s companion. “The farmers fired upon them; they replied, and one of the tenants is dead.”
“A good lesson for them, since they were the aggressors,” cried the heir, as he sprang from the coach. “But you have startled the lady.”
An exclamation from the vehicle in an unmistakably feminine voice caused the “wacht-meester” now to observe the occupant for the first time and the servant threw up his hands in consternation. Here was a master who drank all night, shot his tenants by proxy, visited strollers, and now brought one of them to the steyn. That the strange lady was a player, Oly-koeks immediately made up his mind, and he viewed her with mingled aversion and fear, as the early settlers regarded sorcerers and witches. She was very beautiful, he observed in that quick glance, but therefore the more dangerous; she appeared distressed, but he attributed her apparent grief to artfulness. He at once saw a new source of trouble in her presence; as though the threads were not already sufficiently entangled, without the introduction of a woman––and she a public performer!––into the complicated mesh!
“Fasten the iron shutters of the house,” briefly commanded Mauville, breaking in upon the servant’s painful reverie. “Then help this man change the horses and put in the grays.”
Oly-koeks, with a final deprecatory glance at the 158 coach, expressive of his estimate of his master’s light conduct and his apprehension of the outcome, disappeared to obey this order.