an awkward corner.
Moreover, if Miss Belcher had not come forward, Plinny was prepared
to purchase. That Miss Belcher would acquire the place no one
doubted. Still, a public sale it had to be.

Early in the afternoon of the 5th, she left us for Plymouth, to make
arrangements for the bidding. I did not see her depart, having been
occupied since five in the morning in a glorious otter-hunt, for
which Mr. Rogers had brought over his hounds. The heat of the day
found us far up-stream, and a good ten miles from home; and by the
time Mr. Rogers had returned his pack to Miss Belcher's hospitable
kennels the sun was low in the west. I know nothing that will make a
man more honestly dirty than a long otter-hunt, followed by a
perspiring tramp along a dusty road. From feet to waist I was a cake
of dried mud overlaid with dust. I had dust in my hair, in the
creases of my clothes, in the pores of my skin. I needed ablution
far beyond the resources of Miss Belcher's establishment, which, to
tell the truth, left a good deal to seek in the apparatus of personal
cleanliness; and, snatching up the clean shirt and suit of clothes
which the ever-provident Plinny had laid out on the bed for me, I ran
down across the park to the stream under the plantation.

Little rain had fallen for a month past, and, arriving at the pool on
which I had counted for a bath, I found it almost dry. While I stood
there, in two minds whether to return or to strip and make the best
of it, I bethought me that--although I had never bathed there in my
life, the stream would be better worth trying where it ran through
the now deserted garden of Minden Cottage, below the summer-house.
The bottom might be muddy, but the dam which my father had built
there secured a sufficiency of water in the hottest months.
I picked up my clothes again, and, following the stream up to the
little door in the garden wall, pushed open the rusty latch, and
entered the garden.

The hour, as I have said, was drawing on to dusk; and though, perhaps
I ought to say, I am by nature not inclined to nervousness (or I had
not ventured so near that particular spot), yet scared enough I was,
as I stepped on to the little foot-bridge, to see a man standing by
the doorway of the summer-house.

For an instant a terror seized me that it might be a ghost--or,
worse, the man himself, Aaron Glass. But a second glance, as I
halted on a hair-trigger--so to speak--to turn and run for my life,