nger will you keep your
cousin Michael in prison?"

And thereupon the duke closed his eyes on this world, and went upon his
way.

CHAPTER VII

A bachelor's an unfinished thing ... He wants somebody to listen to
his talk.--EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

Reader, do you know Barford, in Hampshire? If you don't, I can tell you
how to get to it. You take train from Victoria, and you get out at
Saundersfoot. There is nothing at Saundersfoot, except a wilderness of
lodgings and a tin station and a high wind. It need not detain an active
mind beyond the necessary moment of enquiring by which road it may be
most quickly left. I cannot tell you who Saunders was, nor why the
watering-place was called after his foot. But if you walk steadily away
from it for five miles inland, along the white chalky road between the
downs, you will arrive at the little village of Barford.

There is only one road, so you cannot miss your way. Little twisty lanes
fretted with sheep-tracks drop down into it now and then from the
broad-shouldered downs on either side, but take no notice of them. If
you persevere, you will in due course see the village of Barford lying
in front of you, which, at a little distance, looks as if it had been
carelessly swept into a crease between the downs, while a few cottages
and houses on the hillside seem to have adhered to the ground, and
remained stuck where they were when the sweeping took place.

After you have passed the pond and the post office, and before you reach
the school, you will see a lodge, and an old Italian iron gateway,
flanked by a set of white wooden knobs planted in the ground on either
side, held together by chains. The white knobs are apparently there in
order to upset carriages as they drive in or out. But very few carriages
have driven in or out during the last two years, except those of the
owner of Barford Manor, Wentworth Maine. Wentworth, since he inherited
the place from his uncle five years ago, had always led a somewhat
secluded life. But during the last two years, ever since his
half-brother, Michael, had been sentenced and imprisoned in Italy,
Wentworth had withdrawn himself even more from the society of his
neighbours. He continued to shoot and hunt, and to do his duties as a
magistrate and as a supporter of the Conservative party, but his thin,
refined face had a certain worn, pinched look, which spoke of long
tracts of solitary unhappiness. And the habit of solitude was gro