Isaac mixed himself a drink and lighted a cigar. He plunged his hands deep in the pockets of his riding-breeches, and facing his brother, stared hard at him.
"I believe you're afraid, Sim!" he said.
Simpson stared just as hard back.
"Well, then, I'm not!" he retorted. "I'm afraid of naught—that I can see and get at. All the same we both agreed that this was a queer place."
"Queer or no queer, here we are, my lad, at a ridiculous rental, and here we stop," said Isaac. "It'll take something that I've never heard of to shift us."
An hour later, it then being nine o'clock—the brothers took a lanthorn and, after their usual custom, went round the farm-buildings to see that everything was safe for the night. They were well-to-do young men, these two, and they had brought a quantity of valuable live stock with them. The stables, the folds, the byres, the cow-houses were all full; the pig-cotes were strained to their utmost capacity, for both Simpson and Isaac believed in pigs as a means of making money. Not for many a year had the old farmstead contained so much life.
They went from stable to stall, from fold to byre, from cote to granary—all was in order for the night. The horses turned sleepy heads and looked round at the yellow light of the swinging lanthorn; the cows gazed at their owners with silky eyes; the young bullocks and heifers in the knee-deep straw of the folds stared lazily at the two inspectors. Over this bovine life, over the high roofs and quaint gables the deep blue of the night hung, pierced with the shafts of a thousand stars.
"All's right," said Isaac, as they finished up at the pigs. "By the bye, where did Trippett fasten up that new dog?"
"Back-yard, I told him," answered Simpson, laconically.
"Let's have a look at him," said Isaac.