d by. The door was opened almost at once by the maid.

"Is Doctor Livesey in?" I asked.

"No," she said. He had come home in the afternoon, but had gone up to
the Hall to dine and pass the evening with the squire.

"So there we go, boys," said Mr. Dance.

This time, as the distance was short, I did not mount, but ran with
Dogger's stirrup-leather to the lodge gates, and up the long, leafless,
moonlit avenue to where the white line of the Hall buildings looked on
either hand on great old gardens. Here Mr. Dance dismounted and, taking
me along with him, was admitted at a word into the house.

The servant led us down a matted passage, and showed us at the end into
a great library, all lined with bookcases and busts upon top of them,
where the squire and Doctor Livesey sat, pipe in hand, on either side of
a bright fire.

I had never seen the squire so near at hand. He was a tall man, over six
feet high, and broad in proportion, and he had a bluff, rough-and-ready
face, all roughened and reddened and lined in his long travels. His
eyebrows were very black, and moved readily, and this gave him a look of
some temper, not bad, you would say, but quick and high.

"Come in, Mr. Dance," said he, very stately and condescending.

"Good evening, Dance," said the doctor, with a nod. "And good evening to
you, friend Jim. What good wind brings you here?"

The supervisor stood up straight and stiff, and told his story like a
lesson; and you should have seen how the two gentlemen leaned forward
and looked at each other, and forgot to smoke in their surprise and
interest. When they heard how my mother went back to the inn, Doctor
Livesey fairly slapped his thigh, and the squire cried "Bravo!" and
broke his long pipe against the grate. Long before it was done, Mr.
Trelawney (that, you will remember, was the squire's name) had got up
from his seat, and was striding about the room, and the doctor, as if to
hear the better, had taken off his powdered wig, and sat there, looking
very strange indeed with his own close-cropped, black poll.

At last Mr. Dance finished the story.

"Mr. Dance," said the squire, "you are a very noble fellow. And as for
riding down that black, atrocious miscreant, I regard it as an act of
virtue, sir, like stamping on a cockroach. This lad Hawkins is a trump,
I perceive. Hawkins, will you ring that bell? Mr. Dance must have some
ale."

"And so, Jim," said the doctor, "you have the thing that they were
af