Below me I saw a grass terrace and a broad walk, and beyond these the mansion of Helmscote. No wonder Dick showed a touch of pride and affection when (on very rare occasions, I admit) he had alluded to his home. It was an old brick house of the Tudor period, though some parts were apparently more ancient than that and had been built, I should say, by the first Shafthead who had settled there. The colors—the red with diagonal designs of black bricks through it, the stone of the mullioned windows, the old tiles on the roof, the gray of the ancient portions, even, I fancied, the green ivy—had all been softened and harmonized by time and by weather till the whole house had become a rich scheme that would have defied the most cunning painter to imitate it.
“I know Dick better since I have seen his home,” I said to myself. “And his sister? Yes, I think I know her better, too, though not so well as I should like to. Pardieu! what has become of her?”
“Well, sir,” said a voice behind me, “what, are you doing there?”
I turned with a start, my grip of the wall slipped, and, with more precipitation than grace, I descended to the garden again to find myself confronted by a decidedly formidable individual. He was a gentleman of something over sixty years of age, but tall and broad and upright far beyond the common, and even though his left arm was in a sling of black silk I should not have cared to try conclusions with him. His face was ruddy and fresh, his features aristocratic and well-marked, his eyes blue and very bright, and he was dressed in a shooting-suit and leather leggings. The air of proprietorship, the wounded left arm, and the family resemblance left me in no doubt as to who he was. I was, in fact, about to enjoy the interview with Sir Philip Shafthead for the sake of which I had entered his garden.
Yet, strange though it may seem, gratitude for this stroke of good luck was not my first sensation.
“Who the devil are you, and what are you doing here, sir?” he repeated, sternly.
He had not heard of my arrival, then, and on the instant the thought struck me that since he did not know who I was, I might make the experiment of feigning ignorance of him.