“You will?” he exclaimed with a parade of pleasure. “Then in that case I shall not need protection against the rain.”
His arm shot out, and I saw the umbrella fly up like a thick javelin through the air, to disappear beyond the wall beside which we stood.
“Another thing!” he cried, and I detected a real note of sincerity in his tempestuous voice. “Tell the golden-haired woman that I have warned her to beware of the blighter with the red face and the pot of money. She should dismiss him—utterly. I have seen what I have seen.”
I emitted a dry “No doubt.”
“Thank you, sir, for your great courtesy,” said Mr. MacWilloughby. His lofty hat he removed with a flowing ease; he bent his back in an old-time inclination. Then in the fluctuating moonlight I saw not only black beard and brows, but as well a wriggling mass of black hair. He was smiling, but his smile now had a touch of wildness, even of ghoulishness. He set his hat upon his brows again.
“I shall not need even finger-nails if I meet another like you,” he said.
He turned on his heel and continued his stately promenade toward the summit of the Vale. I watched him until the moon surrendered and the mist had him. Where was he going? To join that prehistoric man on the hill? And where in heaven’s name had he come from?
Mad? Was he mad? No more mad than I. I realized, the moment he had projected his umbrella, that he was eminently sane. But he had overplayed his part a little—for his audience.
Continuing on my southward way, I soon passed the site of what had been the outer walls of this great castle, though now little remained save one block of hewn stone upon another here and there. Most of the material had probably been carried off to build some mansion of a later age.
I left the ruin, advancing down the Vale, whose bounds of lofty crag and hanger were darkly visible for a little while. But I could not leave behind me the thought of the huge man and his eccentric speeches. Only new surprises could reave that vision from me; and presently, passing a large, white-painted, wood-gate, I was startled to observe that although I was in a wilderness, it was an extraordinarily well-ordered wilderness. The trees along the path, ash and sycamore, I believed, stood at like distances from one another and were spaced regularly opposite. I seemed to be marching along a smooth avenue in a park; the remoter trees, too, although they were obscure as fleeing ghosts, appeared to flee away in serried ranks. The spaces in the glades looked clear of underbrush. I was glad to note these signs, if signs they were, of human tending, with their suggestion of human nearness, for even my refreshened strength was slipping away from me and the welts and strains of my body were clamouring again.