The path from the allotments to the village passed at the back of the wood. Branching off from it, an old path leading through the trees and round the edge of the lake had once been frequently used as a short cut from the village to the house, but was now badly grown up and indeed superseded by the new drive from the western lodge, made some twenty years before this date.
The labourer, Richard Stimson, was therefore vaguely surprised when he turned the corner of the wood and reached the fork of the path, to see a figure of a woman, on the old right-of-way, between him and the wood, for which she seemed to be making.
It was not the figure of anyone he knew. It was a lady, apparently, in a dark gown, and a small hat with a veil. The light was still good, and he saw her clearly. He stopped indeed to watch her, puzzled to know what a stranger could be doing in the park, and on that path at ten o'clock at night. He was aware indeed that there were gay doings at Beechmark. He had seen the illuminated garden and house from the upper park, and had caught occasional gusts of music from the band to which no doubt the quality were dancing. But the fact didn't seem to have much to do with the person he was staring at.
And while he stared at her, she turned, and instantly perceived—he thought—that she was observed. She paused a moment, and then made an abrupt change of direction; running round the corner of the wood, she reached the path along which he himself had just come and disappeared from view.
The whole occurrence filliped the rustic mind; but before he reached his own cottage, Stimson had hit on an explanation which satisfied him. It was of course a stranger who had lost her way across the park, mistaking the two paths. On seeing him, she had realized that she was wrong and had quickly set herself right. He told his wife the tale before he went to sleep, with this commentary; and they neither of them troubled to think about it any more.
Perhaps the matter would not have appeared so simple to either of them had they known that Stimson had no sooner passed completely out of sight, leaving the wide stretches of the park empty and untenanted under a sky already alive with stars, than the same figure reappeared, and after pausing a moment, apparently to reconnoitre, disappeared within the wood.
"A year ago to-day, where were you?" said one Brigadier to another, as the two Generals stood against the wall in the Beechmark drawing-room to watch the dancing.
"Near Albert," said the man addressed. "The brigade was licking its wounds and training drafts."
The other smiled.
"Mine was doing the same thing—near Armentières. We didn't think then, did we, that it would be all over in five months?"