to, but I shall stay here till
everything is settled."

I was really sorry for Aunt Mary. She was almost ready to cry.

"You know perfectly well I shouldn't dream of leaving you here, perhaps
to be murdered," whimpered she. "Where you stay, I stay."

She had the air of an elderly female Casabianca.

As for Miss Randolph, I adored her when she bade me go with her to
investigate what lay behind the wall, and told Talleyrand off for
sentinel duty over Aunt Mary and the car in the road.

At first sight the wall seemed a blank one, but I found a large gate,
pushed it open, and we walked into the darkness of a great farmyard. Not
a glimmer showed the position of the house, but a clatter of hoofs and a
chink of light guided us towards a stable, where a giant man with
aquiline face was rubbing down a rusty and aged horse. He started and
fixed a suspicious stare on me, and I daresay that I was a forbidding
figure in my dirty leather clothes, with smears of oil upon my face. His
expression lightened a little at sight of my companion, but he was
inflexible in his refusal to drive us anywhere. His old mare had cast a
shoe on her way home just now; he would not take her out again. Could
he, then, Miss Randolph asked, give us rooms for the night, and food? As
to that he was not sure, but would consult his wife. He tramped before
us to the big dark house, put down his lantern in the hall, opened a
door, and ushered us into a dark room, following and closing the door
behind him. The room was airless and heavy with the odour of cooking.
The darkness was intense, and from the midst of it came a strange sound
of jabbering and bleating which for the life of me I couldn't
understand. I felt Miss Randolph draw near me as if for protection, then
with the scratch of a match and a flicker from a lamp which the farmer
was lighting, was revealed the cause of the weird sounds. Seated by the
stove was a pathetically old woman, with pendulous chin and rheumy eyes.
Swinging her palsied head from side to side, she jabbered and bleated
incoherently to herself, being abandoned to this plague of darkness
doubtless from motives of economy.

The farmer's wife appeared, and after much discussion it was arranged
that the ladies could have a double-bedded room, and there was a small
one that would do for Monsieur Talleyrand; but the _mecanicien_ would
have to sleep in the barn, where he could have some clean straw. Supper
could be ready in half an hour