ir sites for shelter rather than for view; and this--and perhaps
a well of exquisite water bubbling by the garden gate on the very lip of
the brook--must explain the situation of the Old Court. Its present
owner--being inordinately rich--had abandoned it to his bailiff, and built
himself a lordly barrack on the ridge, commanding views that stretch from
the moors to the sea. For this nine out of ten would commend him; but no
true a Cleeve would ever have owned so much of audacity or disowned so
much of tradition, and he has wasted a compliment on the perished family
by assuming its name.

The last a Cleeve who should have inherited Cleeve Court returned to it
for the last time on a grey and dripping afternoon in 1805--on the same
day and at the same hour, in fact, when, hundreds of miles to the
southward, our guns were banging to victory off Cape Trafalgar.
Here, at home, on the edge of the Cleeve woods, the air hung heavy and
soundless, its silence emphasised rather than broken now and again by the
_kuk-kuk_ of a pheasant in the undergrowth. Above the plantations, along
the stubbled uplands, long inert banks of vapour hid the sky-line; and out
of these Walter a Cleeve came limping across the ridge, his figure looming
unnaturally.

He limped because he had walked all the way from Plymouth in a pair of
French sabots--a penitential tramp for a youth who loathed walking at the
best of times. He knew his way perfectly, although he followed no path;
yet, coming to the fringe of the woodland, he turned aside and skirted the
fence as if unexpectedly headed off by it. And this behaviour seemed
highly suspicious to Jim Burdon, the under-keeper, who, not recognising
his young master, decided that here was a stranger up to no good.

Jim's mind ran on poachers this year. Indeed he had little else to brood
over and very little else to discuss with Macklin, the head-keeper.
The Cleeve coverts had come to a pretty pass, and, as things were going,
could only end in worse. Here they were close on the third week in
October, and not a gun had been fired. Last season it had been bad
enough, and indeed ever since the black day which brought news that young
Mr. Walter was a prisoner among the French. No more shooting-parties, no
more big beats, no more handsome gratuities for Macklin and windfalls for
Jim Burdon! Nevertheless, the Squire, with a friend or two, had shot the
coverts after a fashion. The blow had shaken him: uncerta