The grays came to a standstill, “If you please!” said the Earl.
Mr. Leek alighted ponderously. The gate was a heavy one, and he was obliged to lift the end before it would pass over the cart-ruts. The curricle moved forward, and stopped again a few yards beyond the gate. As Mr. Leek, who, being country-bred, had no thought of leaving it open, was shutting it again, the Earl spoke to him over his shoulder.
“You will have to forgive me, Leek,” he said. “Really, I bear you no ill-will, and I am quite sure your interest in me is friendly, but, you see, I don’t like being followed. You are now midway between Evesleigh and Stanyon: if I were you I would walk back rather than forward.”
“Hi!” exclaimed Mr. Leek, abandoning the gate, and starting towards the curricle. “ Hi,guv’nor!”
The grays were already moving. Mr. Leek broke into a run, but his years and his bulk were against him, and he very soon abandoned a hopeless chase, and stood with labouring chest and heated countenance, staring resentfully after the curricle until it vanished round a bend in the lane.
“Grassed!” he said bitterly. “Well, may I shove the tumbler if ever I been made to look blue by a mouth afore!” He removed his hat, and mopped his face and head with a large handkerchief. After a moment’s reflection, he added, with reluctant respect: “Which he ain’t — not by a very long way he ain’t!”
Having by this time recovered his breath, he resettled the hat on his head, and turned to find his way back to Stanyon. The deeply rutted lane made walking far from pleasant; and since he was quite lost, and had little expectation of receiving succour, his only consolation lay in the hope that several more cattle-gates stood between the Earl and his goal.
But the luck favoured him. At the end of half a mile, the track joined a rather better road, which led, a few hundred yards farther on, to a choice of three ways. Mr. Leek was doubtful which he should take, for none of them seemed to have a distinguishing feature by which he might have remembered it. A battered sign-post informed him that the ways led respectively to Climpton, Beaumarsh, and Forley, but as he was unacquainted with any of these villages this was not helpful. He stood under the post, considering, and just as he had decided to proceed down the lane which he fancied was the least unfamiliar to him the sound of an approaching vehicle suddenly came to his ears. Blessing himself for his good fortune, he waited; and in another few minutes a gig, drawn by a stout brown cob, came into sight. He hailed it, and it drew up beside him. The round-faced young farmer who was driving it looked down at him in some curiosity, and asked him what he wanted. Mr. Leek, laying a detaining hand on the gig, countered by demanding to know whither the farmer was bound. After staring very hard at him for a moment, the farmer disclosed that he was going to Cheringham, at the mention of which known name Mr. Leek brightened, and said: “If you’re going to Cheringham, young fellow, you wouldn’t be going so very far out of your way if you was to be so obliging as to set me down at Stanyon. Which I’ll thank you very kindly for.”
“Stanyon?” said the farmer. “Whatever would you be wanting to go there for?”
“Stanyon Castle,” said Mr. Leek, with dignity, “is the place where I live — tempor’y!”