n,
except at the lower end, where it gave on to a stretch of undulating
bare ground ending in a timbered slope half-a-mile away.

'That's where the old Marshalton race-course used to be,' said Zigler.
'That ice-house is called Flora's Temple. Nell Gwynne and Mrs. Siddons
an' Taglioni an' all that crowd used to act plays here for King George
the Third. Wasn't it? Well, George is the only king I play. Let it go at
that. This circle was the stage, I guess. The kings an' the nobility sat
in Flora's Temple. I forget who sculped these statues at the door.
They're the Comic and Tragic Muse. But it's a sightly view, ain't it?'

The sunlight was leaving the park. I caught a glint of silver to the
southward beyond the wooded ridge.

'That's the ocean--the Channel, I mean,' said Zigler. 'It's twenty-three
miles as a man flies. A sightly view, ain't it?'

I looked at the severe yews, the dumb yelling mouths of the two statues,
at the blue-green shadows on the unsunned grass, and at the still bright
plain in front where some deer were feeding.

'It's a most dramatic contrast, but I think it would be better on a
summer's day,' I said, and we went on, up one of the noiseless rides, a
quarter of a mile at least, till we came to the porticoed front of an
enormous Georgian pile. Four footmen revealed themselves in a hall hung
with pictures.

'I hired this off of my Lord Marshalton,' Zigler explained, while they
helped us out of our coats under the severe eyes of ruffed and
periwigged ancestors. 'Ya-as. They always look at _me_ too, as if I'd
blown in from the gutter. Which, of course, I have. That's Mary, Lady
Marshalton. Old man Joshua painted her. Do you see any likeness to my
Lord Marshalton? Why, haven't you ever met up with him? He was Captain
Mankeltow--my Royal British Artillery captain that blew up my gun in the
war, an' then tried to bury me against my religious principles[4].
Ya-as. His father died and he got the lordship. That was about all he
got by the time that your British death-duties were through with him. So
he said I'd oblige him by hiring his ranch. It's a hell an' a half of a
proposition to handle, but Tommy--Mrs. Laughton--understands it. Come
right in to the parlour and be very welcome.'

[Footnote 4: "The Captive": _Traffics and Discoveries_.]

He guided me, hand on shoulder, into a babble of high-pitched talk and
laughter that filled a vast drawing-room. He introduced me as the
founder of the family fort