“Stand back!” she cried; “don’t come near me!”
Moggridge was too staggered at this outburst to say a word.
“Stand away!” she said, and the bewildered attendant stood away. She turned to Mr Beveridge.
“Now, will you help me up?”
She mounted lightly, said a brief farewell, and, forgetting all about the call at Clankwood she had ostensibly come to pay, turned her horse’s head towards the lodge.
“Well, I’m blowed!” said Moggridge.
“They do blow one,” his patient assented.
Naturally enough the story of this equestrian adventure soon ran through Clankwood. The exact particulars, however, were a little hard to collect, for while Moggridge supplied many minute and picturesque details, illustrating his own activity and presence of mind and the imminent peril of the Lady Alicia, Mr Beveridge recounted an equally vivid story of a runaway horse recovered by himself to its fair owner’s unbounded gratitude. Official opinion naturally accepted the official [pg 46] account, and for the next few days Mr Beveridge became an object of considerable anxiety and mistrust.
“I can’t make the man out,” said Sherlaw to Escott. “I had begun to think there was nothing much the matter with him.”
“No more there is,” replied Escott. “His memory seems to me to have suffered from something, and he simply supplies its place in conversation from his imagination, and in action from the inspiration of the moment. The methods of society are too orthodox for such an aberration, and as his friends doubtless pay a handsome fee to keep him here, old Congers labels him mad and locks the door on him.”