with new turrets for watchmen, each after the need or fashion of his age, but all with minds single to the idea of blocking the path that Caermere overhung. In due time came the breath of the king’s peace, blowing equably over the vexed marches, albeit loaded with the scent of gunpowder, and my lords slowly put aside their iron harness for silken jackets, and unslung the herses in their gateways. Men of skill set now about the task of expanding the turfed spaces within the inclosure, of spreading terraces and forming gardens, of turning stone chambers into dames’ apartments, and sullen guard-rooms into banquet-halls. Their grandsons, in turn, pulled down even more than they erected; where the mightiest walls had shouldered their huge bulk, these men of Elizabeth and James left thin façades of brickwork, and beams of oak set in a trivial plaster casing. The old barbican was not broad enough to span their new roadway, stretching to the valley below over the track of the former military path, and they blew it up; the pleasure-ground, which they extended by moving far backward the wall of the tilting yard, was bare of aspect to their eye, and they planted it with yews and, later, with cedars from the Lebanon.
Through all these changes, Caermere remained upon its three sides shadowed by great hills, and the thought of making wide windows in the walls on the open fourth side came to no one. When at last, in the earlier Georgian time, the venerable piles of bastioned masonry here were replaced by a feebly polite front of lath and stucco, windows were indeed cut to the very floor, in the French style, but meanwhile the trees had grown into a high screen against the sky, and it was not in the Torr blood to level timber.
When a house and family have lived together for a thousand years, it is but reasonable that they should have come to an understanding with each other. Was Caermere dark because the mood of the Torrs, its makers and masters, had from the dawn of things been saturnine? Or did the Torrs owe their historic gloom and dourness of temperament to the influence of this somber cradle of their race? There is record of the query having been put, in a spirit of banter, by a gentleman who rode over Clune bridge in the train of King John. Of convincing answer there is none to this latest day. The Torrs are a dark folk, and Caermere is a dark house. They belong to one another and that is all.
Thus, on the first morning of October, a gray and overcast morning even on the hilltops, and though it was past the half-hour towards nine, there was barely light enough to see one’s way about by in the big breakfast-room.
A tall young man in rough, light-brown clothes stood at one of the windows, drumming idly on the glass and staring at the black cedars beyond the lawn. At intervals he whistled under his breath, in a sulky fashion, some primitive snatches of an unknown tune. Once or twice he yawned, and then struck a vicious ring from the panes with his hard nails, in protesting comment upon his boredom.
About the large fireplace behind him were dishes huddled for heat, and their metallic gleam in the flicker of the flames was repeated farther away in the points of red on the plate and glass of the long breakfast table spread in the center of the room. From time to time a white-faced youngster in livery entered the room, performed some mysterious service at the hearth or the table in the dim twilight and went out again.
The man at the window paid no heed to the goings and comings of the servant, but when the door opened presently and another tweed-clad figure entered, his ear told him the difference on the instant, and he half turned his head.
“In God’s name, what are you all doing?” he growled angrily. “I said eight—you heard me!—sharp eight!”
“What does it matter?” protested the newcomer, stooping at the fire-place to lift the covers from the dishes in a languid inspection of their contents. He yawned as he spoke. “If you won’t let fellows go to bed till four, how the devil do you expect them to be down at eight?”
“Oh, is that you, Pirie?” said the man at the window. “I thought it was my brother.” The other stood for a moment, with his back to the fire. Then he lounged to the window, stretching his arms as he moved. He also was tall, but with a scattering of gray in his hair.
“Beastly black morning,” he commented in drowsy tones, after a prolonged observation of the prospect. “Might as well stopped in bed.”
“Well, go back then!” snapped the other. “I didn’t make the rotten weather, did I?” This was wanton ill-temper. The elder man also began drumming with his nails on the window. “Turn it up, Eddy,” he remonstrated, smoothly enough, but with a latent snarl in his tone. “I don’t like it.”
The younger man moved his head, as if he would have looked his companion in the face. Then he stared away again, out of the window.
“Beaters been waitin’ half an hour already,” he grumbled, sulkily. “What’s the good of makin’ a time if you don’t keep it?”
“I didn’t make any time,” responded Major Pirie with curtness. Upon reflection, he added: “What does it matter about the beaters?”
There seemed no answer to this, and for several minutes nothing was said. Finally the younger man thought of something. “I say,” he began, and after an instant’s pause went on: “It’d suit me better not to be called ‘Eddy’ among the men, d’ye see? That fellow Burlington began it last night—he got it from you—and I don’t like it. When we’re alone, of course, that’s different.”
Major Pirie laughed—a dry, brief, harsh laugh—and swung around on his heels. “Your man didn’t get those sausages I asked for, after all,” he remarked, going back to the dishes at the fender.
“Probably couldn’t,” said Mr. Edward, “or else,” he added, “wouldn’t. I never saw such a houseful of brutes and duffers. I’m keen to shunt the lot of ‘em, and they know it, the beggars. You’d think they’d try to suck up to me, but they don’t, they haven’t got brains enough.”
The major had brought a plate from the table, and was filling it from under the covers on the hearth. “Shall I ring for the tea?” he asked.
Mr. Edward moved across to the chimney corner and pulled the cord himself. “Do you know what that old ass, Barlow—the butler, you know—had the face to say to me yesterday? ‘I’—God, you couldn’t believe it! ‘I ’ope, sir,’ he says, ‘you’ll think better of shootin’ on the First, for His Grace’ll hear the guns in the covers, and it won’t do His Grace no good.’ Fancy the beggar’s cheek!”
“Well, do you know, Torr,” said Major Pirie, slowly, speaking with his mouth full but contriving to give a significantly nice emphasis to the name, “I was thinkin’ much the same myself. For that matter, several of the fellows were mentionin’ it. It doesn’t look quite the thing, you know.”
The entrance of the servant created an interval of silence, during which Mr. Edward in his turn rummaged among the dishes before the fire.
“It’s Gus, is it?” he demanded, from where he knelt on one knee, plate in hand.
“He thought it would be funny to queer my game, eh?”
“Your brother hasn’t said a word, so far’s I know,” replied the major, pouring his tea. “It was merely some of the fellows, talkin’.”
“God Almighty!” cried Mr. Edward, springing to his feet. “Here’s a precious outfit of pals for you! You come down here, so help me—”
“Don’t say ‘you’; say ‘they,’ if you’ve got to say anything,” interposed the major, quietly.
“Well, they, then,” the other went on, in
