For my part (do not forget what a young man I was in those days), I made up my mind to reply in the friendliest manner—that is to say, in person.
After consulting my watch, I satisfied myself that I could go to the mill, and get back again, before the hour fixed for our late dinner—supper we should have called it in Germany. For the second time that day, and without any hesitation, I took the road that led to Fordwitch Wood.
Crossing the glade, I encountered a stout young woman, filling a can with water from the spring. She curtseyed on seeing me. I asked if she belonged to the village.
The reply informed me that I had taken another of my servants for a stranger. The stout nymph of the spring was my kitchen-maid; and she was fetching the water which we drank at the house; "and there's no water, sir, like yours for all the country round." Furnished with these stores of information, I went my way, and the kitchen-maid went hers. She spoke, of course, of having seen her new master, on returning to the servants' hall. In this manner, as I afterwards heard, the discovery of me at the spring, and my departure by the path that led to the mill, reached Mrs. Roylake's ears—the medium of information being the lady's own maid. So far, Fordwitch Wood seemed to be a place to avoid, in the interests of my domestic tranquillity.
Arriving at the cottage, I found the Lodger standing by the open window at which I had first seen him.
But on this occasion, his personal appearance had undergone a singular process of transformation. The lower part of his face, from his nostrils to his chin, was hidden by a white handkerchief tied round it. He had removed the stopper from a strangely shaped bottle, and was absorbed in watching some interesting condition in a dusky liquid that it contained. To attract his attention by speaking was of course out of the question; I could only wait until he happened to look my way.
My patience was not severely tried: he soon replaced the stopper in the bottle, and, looking up from it, saw me. With his free hand, he quickly removed the handkerchief, and spoke.
"Let me ask you to wait in the boat-house," he said; "I will come to you directly." He pointed round the corner of the new cottage; indicating of course the side of it that was farthest from the old building.
Following his directions, I first passed the door that he used in leaving or returning to his room, and then gained the bank of the river. On my right hand rose the mill building, with its big waterwheel—and, above it, a little higher up the stream, I recognized the boat-house; built out in the water on piles, and approached by a wooden pier.
No structure of this elaborate and expensive sort would have been set up by my father, for the miller's convenience. The boat-house had been built, many years since, by a rich retired tradesman with a mania for aquatic pursuits. Our ugly river had not answered his expectations, and our neighborhood had abstained from returning his visits. When he left us, with his wherries and canoes and outriggers, the miller took possession of the abandoned boat-house. "It's the sort of fixture that don't pay nohow," old Toller remarked. "Suppose you remove it—there's a waste of money. Suppose you knock it to pieces—is it worth a rich gentleman's while to sell a cartload of firewood?" Neither of these alternatives having been adopted, and nobody wanting an empty boat-house, the clumsy mill boat, hitherto tied to a stake, and exposed to the worst that the weather could do to injure it, was now snugly sheltered under a roof, with empty lockers (once occupied by aquatic luxuries) gaping on either side of it.