At first I could see nothing, but as my eyes grew accustomed to the brightness within, I was enabled to make out the interior. It was a stable, and by the light of a couple of lanterns hung upon the wall an old man was whisping the mud stains from a magnificent chestnut mare, pausing every now and again to rub her sleek, glossy sides. A younger man muffled in a cloak was standing with his back to us, a lantern at his feet.
My eyes were rivetted upon the mare, for I have ever been a lover of horses, and indeed to a man who has spent the better part of twenty years in the saddle and who has owed his life again and again to the speed of the animal beneath him, the love of them becomes as it were a second nature. I saw that this was an animal rarely met with in a thousand and that it carried a lady’s saddle and bore the signs of recent hard riding.
I started when the sergeant touched my arm and pointed to the younger man’s belt. Following the direction of his outstretched hand, I saw that this man’s cloak had fallen open and that he carried a bunch of keys at his side. By this I judged him, and rightly so, as it proved, to be the steward. This was a stroke of unexpected good fortune, for the means of gaining access to the house now lay to our hands.
It was this latter who was speaking, every word coming plainly to our ears through the open door.
“Hast nearly finished?” he said impatiently.
“Finished?” said the other, in a high-pitched, querulous voice, and I saw he raised his head and disclosed a yellow face seamed with a hundred wrinkles, that he was much older than I had first thought, and with the unmistakable look of a man who has spent his life amongst horses. “How should I be finished—and look at Carola! Been down on her knees, she has! But what does my lady care? She can stop in the light and warmth yonder. ’Tis old Reuben must clean her horse. Let old Reuben go out in the wet and fog. Nobody minds what happens to him!” He broke off in a fit of coughing.
“How now, old grumbler!” said the other sharply. “That is a lie, and you know it! Aye, and if my lady heard you she would make you smart for those words!”
The old man looked up with a grin that disclosed the few yellow stumps remaining in his head. “She would that, lad!” he chuckled. The steward nodded gravely.
“You will find that my lady does not forget a service,” he said slowly.
“God bless her!” said the old man softly, stooping once more to his work.