Drusilla conducted her new-found relatives over the stables. They had a distant sight of the farm buildings, where the cows, having been newly milked, were wandering out through the gates in slow and irregular procession towards the pasture lands. Then they went round to the kennels and looked at the hounds, and to the mews, where Hawksworth and his fellows were feeding the falcons. Thence through the orchard, now bare of fruit, and the kitchen-garden, where Lord Champernoun, at the instance of his friend Sir Walter Raleigh, had in the last season grown a wondrous crop of potatoes and other vegetable products of the New World. Then round into the park to where a herd of deer, browsing in the wet grass, started off, alarmed at their approach, and ran with great fleetness to a misty hollow among the trees.
At first Drusilla had been strangely shy with her two companions; but they showed such interest in the home of her childhood and treated her with such graceful courtesy that she soon became familiar with them, and answered their many questions freely and eagerly. She pointed out the old oak-tree in the middle of the park under whose spreading branches the village children had crowned her as Queen of the May in the last spring-time. She took them to the side of the lake where Gilbert and she had been wont to sail their boats, and where Gilbert only a week ago had caught a pike. And then, coming back by the front of the house, she pointed out the little latticed window of her chamber, half-hidden among the clambering ivy. From where they were they could see the full extent of the great baronial mansion, with its abutting wings end many gables flanking the tall central turret,—on which the gilt weather-vane shone bright in the morning sunlight,—its stone-shafted oriel windows, and its curiously-twisted chimneys. It was all very magnificent, albeit Drusilla thought less of it for this fact than for the reason that it was sanctified as the residence of so many of her ancestors.
"Ah, 'tis in truth a palace fit for a king!" declared Jasper Oglander aside to his son. "I marvel that I ever had the foolishness to leave it. What wouldst thou say, Phil, an thy father were the owner and master of the place? Nay, do not smile, boy; less likely things than this have come to pass; and remember there be but two frail lives between me and it—your grandfather, poor addle-pated pantaloon, and this stripling Gilbert as they call him, touching whom I should have been by no means sorry had his assailant of yesternight done his work more completely. Mark you, Phil," he reiterated with emphasis, "I had not been sorry—nay, why boggle the matter?—I had in truth been exceeding glad had the wound you wot of been a span nearer to his heart."
Whatever Philip might have said in reply to this cruel remark was cut short by the return of Drusilla, who had but ran forward a few paces to greet Nero, the bloodhound, at the entrance of the courtyard. The dog as it approached the father and son hung down his furrowed head and growled ominously—which was a habit quite unusual with him, in spite of his aspect of ferocity.
"Come, Brutus—Hector—Pompey—what is thy name? Come, good dog," said Jasper Oglander caressingly, snapping his finger and thumb together in invitation to the dog. But Nero still hung his head, and growlingly sniffed about the man's feet, coming finally to Philip and growling yet again. "Ah! he doth well discern that we are strangers to him," continued Jasper, "or else he doth smell the brine about our clothes. Such dogs, I have observed, have a natural aversion to seamen."
"Indeed, uncle, it can scarce be so with Nero," remarked Drusilla, "for he hath a marvellous fondness for Sir Francis Drake, and Sir Francis is a seaman in all conscience."
"Ay, plague on the man," muttered Jasper to himself. And presently he followed Drusilla across the courtyard and into the house.
Timothy Trollope had been for the longer half of the night in his young master's room—a small chamber in the west wing of the house, with very simple furniture, but being crowded with a variety of toy ships, bows and arrows, kites, whips, spurs, morions, corselets, rapiers, foreign shells, snakes bottled in oil, skins of rare animals and birds, and other curious and boyish gear. In front of the fireplace there was a large Polar bear skin, with the head still attached, given to Gilbert by his friend Sir Martin Frobisher. A small casement window in a corner of the room was fitted like a ship's port-hole, with a demi-culverin made of brass pointing outward towards a strip of blue sea that could be discerned far away in the distance beyond the promontory of Rame Head. Gilbert had once fired this cannon from this same place, loading it with stone-shot and aiming at a certain chestnut-tree in the park. The cannon had rebounded even to the farther end of the room, smashing into a cupboard, much to the damage thereof. The report had alarmed the household, nay, even the whole country-side for a mile round; it had come nigh to the deafening of Gilbert himself, for his ears tingled for many days. Fortunately no one had suffered any hurt; fortunately, also, the splendid mansion was too well built to suffer from so unwonted a shock. The lad had fallen into disgrace for a week afterwards and was forbidden to bring gunpowder into the house again. He regretted the foolish freak, but in his regret, and despite of the chastisement he received by order of his stern and offended grandfather, there was still a sort of boyish satisfaction in his heart—a satisfaction which arose from the fact that his shot had hit its intended mark.
Lady Betty smiled as, sitting by her son's bedside in view of the cannon, she remembered this long-past incident. She had come into the room in the early morning, and had dismissed Timothy Trollope, bidding him go and get some sleep and return when the household had risen. Gilbert had slumbered during the whole time that she had been present with him, but at the sound of the opening of the door he had awakened, to find Timothy again at his side and his mother silently retreating on tiptoe.
"Ah, she hath gone, and I had hardly known she was here!" sighed Gilbert. "Go, summon her back, Tim—yet, no; let her not know that I am awake. 'Twill comfort her to think that I am still asleep. But I am sorry that she hath gone. I had meant to question her concerning this Uncle Jasper and his son. For what my mother doth say of them and think of them is certain to be true and just, whether her judgment be favourable or the reverse. Didst mark her demeanour towards them yesternight, Tim? Didst mark if she greeted them in friendly wise?"