Chapter Four.
Concerns a Consultation.
Late that same afternoon Raymond Diamond walked up the long muddy by-road which led from Horsford station to the village, about a mile distant.
Horsford was an obscure little place, still quite out-of-the-world, even in these days of trains and motor-cars.
About four miles west of Peterborough on the edge of the fox-hunting country, it was a pleasant little spot consisting of a beautiful old Norman church, with one of the finest towers in England and one long, straggling street mostly of thatched houses.
There were only two large houses—Horsford House, at the top of the hill on the Peterborough side, and the Manor, an old seventeenth-century mansion, half-way down the village.
It was not yet dark when the Doctor, the only arrival by train, turned the corner by the Wheel Inn and entered the village. As he did so, Warr, who combined the business of publican and village butcher, wished him a cheery “Good evenin’, Doctor.”
And as the little man trudged up the long street he was greeted with many such salutes, to all of which he answered mechanically, for he was thinking—thinking deeply.
The fragrant smell of burning wood from the cottages greeted his nostrils—the smell of that quiet little village which for some years had been his home.