were broken, gates were falling down and it was so obvious that not a spot of paint had been applied in the four years that he had been away.
He remembered that in his father’s day the village had been one of the prettiest in the whole County and people who had come to gaze at The Castle always admired the village as well.
Now the only word to describe the situation was ‘appalling’.
“I must have money,” the Earl said and it was a cry for help.
It was then that he knew the answer.
Adjoining his estate was that of Lord Frazer.
He was an enormously rich man whose father had made a fortune in shipping.
He had come down from the North because he wished his son, who had been to Oxford University, to get to know the right people.
The present Lord Frazer had quarrelled with his neighbour, the tenth Earl of Rayburne, over a wood.
It was a very fine wood on the boundary between the two estates.
The Earl of Rayburne, Michael’s father, had said that without question it belonged to him and always had.
Lord Frazer had contested this by producing an ancient map and it depicted the wood as belonging to what was now the Frazer Estate.
The two old gentlemen fought fiercely for what they each believed to be their rights.
Shortly before his death, his father had told him that he was still getting rude letters from Lord Frazer, complaining that their gamekeepers had been in Duncans Wood and interfering with his game.
“His game indeed!” the Earl had exclaimed. “I have never heard such impertinence in my life! Those pheasants have been ours since the thirteenth century and no amount of maps will ever convince me that I am wrong.”
When Michael left for India, he had forgotten about Duncans Wood.
Now he thought that if he agreed to let Lord Frazer take it once and for all as part of his estate, he might lend him enough money to take his own land back to normal.
He had no idea what it would cost, but it would be a large amount.
At least his experience in India with the Viceroy had taught him how to make fertile an area of land that was growing nothing.
Natives who had very little knowledge of farming were shown how to produce crops and carry livestock successfully and the means by which the Viceroy had succeeded in the famine areas made him feel that he could do the same.
After all the Rayburne Estate was not as large as India.
The Earl, therefore, told the old groom, who was driving him, to proceed to Watton Hall.
Wicks, who had been with his father for over twenty years, said with the familiarity of an old servant,
“Your Lordship won’t get no change out of that Master of Watton Hall. He’s been a-fightin’ against us ever since he come there.”
“I know that,” the Earl said, “but I have an idea that might well tempt him.”
He thought that Wicks knew what he meant, but he did not comment.
He had learned how the servants had managed to keep alive after his uncle had gone.
There were a few vegetables from the garden because the old gardener had remained in his cottage, having nowhere else to go.
They snared rabbits and even managed to shoot a wild duck or two on the lake.
“The swans flew away a long time ago,” he had been told, “after Mr. Burne refused to let us feed them.”
Everything the Earl was hearing about his uncle made him hate him more.
Yet Basil Burne was safely on the other side of the Atlantic and out of reach.
The Earl doubted that he would be in the slightest perturbed by what anyone felt about him in the land he had left.
The only thing that really mattered, the Earl knew, was to find enough money so that the pensioners and children in the village would not starve.
Those who were still working on the land had received nothing in wages since his uncle had guessed that he would be returning from India.
The Earl kept on turning over and over in his mind how shocking it all was.
While he had been so happy in India, he had no idea that his people were suffering, his fields were growing weeds and his Castle was, day by day, becoming more dilapidated.
The horses turned in at the drive leading up to Watton Hall.
It was infuriating to see how well-kept everything looked and the two lodges had very obviously been recently painted as had the iron gates with their gold tips.
It would be ridiculous to say that Watton Hall in any way rivalled The Castle.
Yet it was a prepossessing large mansion and in its own way very impressive. It had been built in the Georgian style early in the reign of Queen Victoria.
As the horses drew up outside the porticoed front door, the Earl could not help feeling that his appearance would be a great surprise to Lord Frazer.
He did not feel nervous, only slightly uncomfortable.
Then he remembered how his relative, the Viceroy, had always won everyone over to his side. It was by what the ladies in the Hill Stations called his magnetism, charm and charisma.
He had, the Earl remembered, a quite deliberate way of speaking and those who met him found him easy-going and informal.
At the same time he had a dignity and bearing that made it impossible for anyone to be unduly familiar.
The Earl remembered too that those who worked for him loved him both for his kindness and for his efficiency.
Surely, he thought, with the Earl of Mayo to guide him, he could get help from anyone, even from Lord Frazer!
The butler, who was very smart and the two footmen in the hall, looked at him in some surprise.
He gave one of the footmen his hat.
Then he followed the butler down a wide passage into what he thought would be either the library or Lord Frazer’s study.
It turned out to be the study and the owner of Watton Hall was sitting there at a most impressive desk.
The inkpot, the pen holder and the candlestick to seal the letters with were all made of solid gold.
“The Earl of Rayburne to see you, my Lord,” the butler announced in a stentorian voice.
Lord Frazer looked up in surprise.
Then he rose slowly to his feet as the Earl
