Chapter Twenty.
Where the Moonbeams Played.
The lately risen moon, in its third quarter, shone across the well-kept lawn at the Denes between two great banks of trees, and through the wide French window in a way that left half the drawing-room in darkness, the conservatory full of lights and shadows of grotesque-looking giant plants in pots, and the other half of the handsome salon fairly illuminated. The shutters had not been closed, and the room door was wide open, seeming apparently untenanted, or as if the occupants of Sir Hilton Lisle’s residence were all retired to rest.
Everything was still as a rule; but every rule has exceptions, and it was the case here. For, as if coming faintly from a distance, there was a continuous, pleasant chirp, such as might have suggested the early bird about to go in search of the worm; but it was a cricket by the still warm hearth of the kitchen.
There was, too, the distant barking of a dog, varied by a remarkably dismal howl such as a dog will utter on moonlight nights if he has not been fed and furnished with a pleasant padding to dull the points of his ribs when he indulges in his customary curl and sleep.
But there was another sound which broke the silence at rare intervals—a strange, bewildering sound in that drawing-room, such as might have been made by water in a gas pipe. But that was impossible, for there was no illuminant of the nature nearer than Tilborough, the Denes being lit up by crystal oil.
To be brief, in spite of these exceptions, all was very still at the Denes. The horse patrol had gone by, with the horse making noise enough on the hard road to warn any burglarious person of his propinquity, and he had passed three shabby-looking individuals, very drunk, and walking right in the middle of the road as far as two were concerned, talking together about what they had made on Tilborough racecourse the previous day, while the third, being very tired and very tipsy, was—probably from a most virtuous intention of walking off the superabundant spirit he had imbibed—more than doubling the distance between Tilborough and the next town, where there was a fair next day, by carefully walking in zig-zags.
The patrol looked at him, and his horse avoided him, and all went on their way, leaving the tree-bordered country road to its moonlit solitude.
But there was another personage on his way from Tilborough races, having a rest in a mossy piece of woodland half a mile from the Denes. He had his coat very tightly buttoned up over his chest, and over two packets of unsold race-cards, a packet over each breast, where with the fire of a pipe of tobacco they helped to keep the traveller taking his al fresco rest nice and warm.
“Bit damp, though,” he said, after the horse patrol’s movements had died out, and he got up, shook himself, and went his way, to reappear in the form of a silhouette against one of the big panes of glass in the French window of the Denes drawing-room.