Micky beckoned, and Mr Boxall drew close till he got within touching distance of the sundial.
“Are yiz Misther Oxhall?” asked Micky in a low and confidential voice, plucking at the moss on the sundial as he spoke, and seeming to address it.
“I am,” said Mr Boxall, recognising his name in the inversion. “What’s all this—where is the lady?”
“Beyant there in the trees,” said Micky, detaching himself from the sundial and making off in the direction of the trees, followed by the other. “I’m to show her to yiz, if y’ll be afther follyin’ me; says he to me, says he, ‘Wait be the sundile till the big clock lets one bang out of it afther it’s sthruck tin, and y’ll see a gintleman wid a big white face,’ says he, ‘and you lade him to see the lady,’ he says, ‘or it’s a kick I’ll be givin’ you, same as Larry Lyburn, instid of a sixpence wid a howl in it,’ he says.”
“Who says?” asked Mr Boxall, in high dudgeon. “What are you talking about? Who told you to wait for me?”
“Sure, that would be tellin’,” said Micky, who was trotting by the other’s side, gambolling with his shadow in the moonlight.
Mr Boxall tramped on in silence, utterly exasperated and confounded. The gambols of the half-witted creature beside him might have given him a hint that something was wrong in the affair. But he was determined to see the thing through.
They crossed the parkland and entered the wood. The moonlight falling between the leafless branches on the withered ferns made a picture wonderfully beautiful and weird.
“Now, which way? Go on—what are you stopping for?” said Mr Boxall, as his guide halted and held up a finger.
An owl crying in the depths of the trees had been answered by its mate.