course, one must have some occupation, living so far out of the world," Louise murmured. "I really am the most fortunate person," she continued. "My car comes to grief in what seems to be a wilderness, and I find myself in a very palace of plenty!"
"I am not sure that your maid agrees," John laughed. "She seemed rather horrified when she found that there was no woman servant about the place."
"Aline is spoiled, without a doubt," her mistress declared. "But is that really the truth?"
"Absolutely."
"But how do you manage?" Louise went on. "Don't you need dairymaids, for instance?"
"The farm buildings are some distance away from the house," John explained. "There is quite a little colony at the back, and the woman who superintends the dairy lives there. It is only in the house that we are entirely independent of your sex. We manage, somehow or other, with Jennings here and two boys."
"You are not both woman-haters, I hope?"
Her younger host flashed a warning glance at Louise, but it was too late. Stephen had laid down his knife and fork and was leaning in her direction.
"Madam," he intervened, "since you have asked the question, I will confess that I have never known any good come to a man of our family from the friendship or service of women. Our family history, if ever you should come to know it, would amply justify my brother and myself for our attitude toward your sex."
"Stephen!" John remonstrated, a slight frown upon his face. "Need you weary our guest with your peculiar views? It is scarcely polite, to say the least of it."
The older man sat, for a moment, grim and silent.
"Perhaps you are right, brother," he admitted. "This lady did not seek our company, but it may interest her to know that she is the first woman who has crossed the threshold of Peak Hall for a matter of six years."
Louise looked from one to the other, half incredulously.
"Do you really mean it? Is that literally true?" she asked John.
"Absolutely," the young man assured her; "but please remember that you are none the less heartily welcome here. We have few women neighbors, and intercourse with them seems to have slipped out of our lives. Tell me, how far have you come to-day, and where did you hope to sleep to-night?"
Louise hesitated for a moment. For some reason or other, the question seemed to bring with it some unexpected and disturbing thought.
"I was motoring from Edinburgh. As regards to-night, I had not made up my mind. I rather hoped to reach Kendal. My journey is not at all an interesting matter to talk about," she went on. "Tell me about your life here. It sounds most delightfully pastoral. Do you really mean that you produce nearly everything yourselves? Your honey and preserves and bread and butter, for instance—are they all home-made?"
"And our hams," the young man laughed, "and everything else upon the table. You underestimate the potentiality of male labor. Jennings is certainly a better cook than the average woman. Everything you see was cooked by him. We have a sort of secondary kitchen, though, down at the bailiff's, where the preserves are made and some of the other things."
"And you live here all the year round?" she asked.
"My brother," John told her, "has not been further away than the nearest market-town for nearly twenty years."
Her eyes grew round with astonishment.
"But you go to London sometimes?"
"I was there eight years ago. Since then I have not been further away than Carlisle or Kendal. I go into the camp near Kendal for three weeks every year—Territorial training, you know."
"But how do you pass your time? What do you do with yourself?" she asked.
"Farm," he answered. "Farming is our daily occupation. Then for amusement we hunt, shoot, and fish. The seasons pass before we know it."
She looked appraisingly at John Strangewey. Notwithstanding his sun-tanned cheeks and the splendid vigor of his form, there was nothing in the least agricultural about his manner or his appearance. There was humor as well as intelligence in his clear, gray eyes. She opined that the books which lined one side of the room were at once his property and his hobby.
"It is a very healthy life, no doubt," she said; "but somehow it seems incomprehensible to think of a man like yourself living always in such an out-of-the-way corner, with no desire to see what is going on in the world, or to be able to form any estimate of the changes in men's thoughts and habits. Human life seems to me so much more interesting than anything else. Does this all sound a little impertinent?" she wound up naïvely. "I am so sorry! My friends spoil me, I believe, and I get into the habit of saying things just as they come into my head."
John's lips were open to reply, but Stephen once more intervened.
"Life means a different thing to each of us, madam," he said sternly. "There are many born with the lust for cities and the crowded places in their hearts, born with the desire to mingle with their fellows, to absorb the conventional vices and virtues, to become one of the multitude. It has been different with us Strangeweys."
Jennings, at a sign from his master, removed the tea equipage, evidently produced in honor of their visitor. Three tall-stemmed glasses were placed upon the table, and a decanter of port reverently produced.
Louise had fallen for a moment or two into a fit of abstraction. Her eyes were fixed upon the opposite wall, from which, out of their faded frames, a row of grim-looking men and women, startlingly like her two hosts, seemed to frown down upon her.
"Is that your father?" she asked, moving her head toward one of the portraits.
"My grandfather, John Strangewey," Stephen told her.
"Was he one of the wanderers?"
"He left Cumberland only twice during his life. He was master of hounds, magistrate, colonel in the yeomanry of that period, and three times he refused to stand for Parliament."
"John Strangewey!" Louise repeated softly to herself. "I was looking at your family tree up-stairs," she went on. "It is curious how both my maid and myself were struck with a sense of familiarity about the name, as if we had heard or read something about it quite lately."
Her words were almost carelessly spoken, but she was conscious of the somewhat ominous silence which ensued. She glanced up wonderingly and intercepted a rapid look passing between the two men. More puzzled than ever, she turned toward John as if for an explanation. He had risen somewhat abruptly to his feet, and his hand was upon the back of her chair.
"Will it be disagreeable to you if my brother smokes a pipe?" he asked. "I tried to have our little drawing-room prepared for you, but the fire has not been lit for so long that the room, I am afraid, is quite impossible."
"Do let me stay here with you," she begged; "and I hope that both of you will smoke. I am quite used to it."
John wheeled up an easy chair for her. Stephen, stiff and upright, sat on the other side of the hearth. He took the tobacco-jar and pipe that his brother had brought him, and slowly filled the bowl.
"With
