one suit of light summer tweed, met Leger on the doorstep of the Committee rooms of a certain Society. Several big wagonettes were already drawn up, and men with pallid faces sat in them, neatly attired for the most part, though somewhat to Ingleby's annoyance several of them smoked clay pipes and wore brilliant neckties and hard felt hats. He was quite aware that it was unreasonable of him to object to this, but, nevertheless, he could not help it. They were, however, quiet and orderly enough, and indulged in no more than good-humoured badinage with the crowd that had assembled to see them off; but Ingleby felt inclined to protest when Leger led him to a place on the box-seat of the foremost vehicle, where a man was scattering leaflets among the crowd.
"Couldn't we sit anywhere else?" he asked. "It's a little conspicuous here."
Leger shook his head. "That can't be helped," he said. "It's the penalty of making speeches. You are considered one of the stalwarts now. There's no use in objecting to the result when you have been guilty of the cause, you know."
"I'll be especially careful another time," said Ingleby, with a little grimace. "In the meanwhile I'm ready to do anything you can reasonably expect of me."
Then there was a cracking of whips and a rattle of wheels, and the discordant notes of a cornet broke through the semi-ironical cheer; and, as they rolled across the river, which, foul with the refuse of tanneries and dye-works, crept out of the close-packed town, a man who sat on the bridge waved his hat to the leading driver.
"Take them straight to the lock-up, Jim," he said. "It will save everybody trouble, and what's the use of going round?"
Then they wound through dusky woods out of the hot valley, and down the long white road across a sun-baked moor, where the dust whirled behind them in a rolling cloud. However, the men in the foremost vehicle got little of it, and Ingleby felt that the drive would have been pleasant in different circumstances, as he watched the blue hills that rose in the dazzling distance, blurred with heat. Only one white fleecy cloud flecked the sweep of cerulean, and the empty moor lay still under the drowsy silence of the Sunday afternoon. It seemed to him most unfitting that the harsh voices of his companions, the clatter of hoofs, and the doleful tooting of the cornet, should jar upon it. Then as they dipped into a hollow they came upon other travellers, all heading in the same direction, who hurled somewhat pointed jests at them as they passed; but these did not exactly resemble the men in the wagonettes. Their attire was by no means neat, and they had not in the least the appearance of men about to discharge a duty, while several of them carried heavy sticks.
"I wonder what they mean to do with those bludgeons," said Ingleby a trifle uneasily.
Leger laughed. "I have no doubt they would come in handy for killing pheasants. There are, I believe, a good many young ones down in the Dene. Of course, the Committee could very well dispense with the company of those fellows, but we can't prevent any man from asserting his rights as a Briton."
"That," said Ingleby, grimly, "is in one respect almost a pity. The difficulty is that somebody will get the credit of our friends' doings."
"Of course!" and Leger laughed again. "You can't be a reformer for nothing; you have to take the rough with the smooth – though there is, as a rule, very little of the latter."
Ingleby said nothing further; but it dawned on him, as it had, indeed, done once or twice before, that even a defective system of preserving peace and order might be preferable to none at all. Still, he naturally would not admit his misgivings, and said nothing until the wagonettes rolled into a little white village gay with flowers and girt about by towering beeches. The windows of an old grey house caught the sunlight and flashed among the trees, and, as the vehicles drew up, a trim groom on a splendid horse swept out through the gate of a clematis-covered lodge.
Then there was a hoarse cheer from a group of dilapidated and dusty loungers as the men swung themselves down outside the black-beamed hostelry which bore a coat-of-arms above its portal. They were unusually quiet, and Leger, who glanced at them, touched Ingleby's shoulder.
"They'll do their work," he said. "Still, I fancy we are expected, and I'm not sure that I'd be sorry if we had the thing done, and were driving home again."
III
CONFLICTING CLAIMS
The sunlight beat down fiercely on the shaven grass, and a drowsy hum of bees stole through the stillness of the Sunday afternoon when Grace Coulthurst and Geoffrey Esmond strolled across the lawn at Holtcar Grange. There were at least two acres of it, flanked by dusky firs and relieved on two sides by patches of graduated colour, while on the third side one looked out towards the blue hills across the deep hollow of Willow Dene into which the beech woods rolled down. A low wall, along which great urns of scarlet geraniums were set, cut off the lawn from the edge of the descent, and Grace, seating herself on the broad coping, glanced down into the cool shadow, out of which the sound of running water came up.
"It really looks very enticing on a day like this. Don't you think it is a little hard on the Hoddam people to shut them out of it?" she said.
Her companion, who leaned, with his straw hat tilted back, against one of the flower-filled urns, smiled as he glanced down at her. He was a young man of slender, wiry frame, with an air of graceful languidness which usually sat well upon him, though there were occasions on which it was not readily distinguished from well-bred insolence.
"I suppose it is, but they brought it upon themselves," he said. "Nobody would mind their walking quietly through the Dene, even if they did leave their sandwich papers and their bottles behind them."
"I have seen wire baskets provided in such places," said Grace.
The young owner of Holtcar Grange laughed. "So have I. In fact, I tried it here, and put up a very civil notice pointing out what they were for. The Hoddam people, however, evidently considered it an unwarrantable interference with their sacred right to make as much mess of another person's property as they pleased, for soon after the baskets arrived we found that somebody had taken the trouble to collect them and deposit them in the lake."
"A gardener could, however, pick up a good many papers in an afternoon."
"It would naturally depend upon how hard he worked, and, as you may have noticed, undue activity is not a characteristic of anybody at the Grange. Still, it would be several years before he made a young holly from which the leading stem had been cut out grow again; besides which the proletariat apparently consider themselves entitled to dig up the primroses and daffodils by basketfuls with spades."
Grace was not greatly interested in the subject, but it at least was safe, and Geoffrey Esmond's conversation had hitherto taken a rather more personal turn than she cared about.
"Still, you could spare them a few wild flowers," she said.
She turned and glanced across the velvet lawn towards the old grey house flanked by its ancient trees. The sunlight lay bright upon its time-mellowed façade, and was flung back from the half-hidden orchid houses and vineries. Esmond apparently understood her, and for a moment his eyes rested curiously upon her face.
"You mean I have rather more than my share of what most people long for? Still, you ought to know that nobody is ever quite content, and that what one has only sets one wishing for more."
Grace laughed. "One would certainly fancy that you had quite enough already – but I wonder if one might ask you if you have heard from Reggie lately?"
Esmond's face hardened a trifle. "You, at least, might. He does not write often – naturally – though I always had a fancy that Reggie mightn't, after all, have been so very much to blame as most people seem to think. Anyway, we had a letter a few weeks ago,
