of Mulcaster until the last few days, whereas Delavoye seemed to know
all about the family. Thereupon he told me he was really connected with
them, though not at all closely with the present peer. It had nothing to
do with his living on an Estate which had changed hands before it was
broken up. But I modified my remark about the ancestral acres--and made
a worse.

"I wasn't thinking of the place," I explained, "as it used to be before
half of it was built over. I was only thinking of that half and its
inhabitants--I mean--that is--the people who go up and down in top-hats
and frock-coats!"

And I was left clinging with both eyes to my companion's cool attire.

"But that's my very point," he laughed and said. "These City fellows are
the absolute salt of historic earth like this; they throw one back into
the good old days by sheer force of contrast. I never see them in their
office kit without thinking of that old rascal in his wig and ruffles,
carrying a rapier instead of an umbrella; he'd have fallen on it like
Brutus if he could have seen his grounds plastered with cheap red bricks
and mortar, and crawling with Stock Exchange ants!"

"You've got an imagination," said I, chuckling. I nearly told him he had
the gift of the gab as well.

"You must have something," he returned a little grimly, "when you're
stuck on the shelf at my age. Besides, it isn't all imagination, and you
needn't go back a hundred years for your romance. There's any amount
kicking about this Estate at the present moment; it's in the soil. These
business blokes are not all the dull dogs they look. There's a man up
our road--but he can wait. The first mystery to solve is the one that's
crying from our back garden."

I liked his way of putting things. It made one forget his yellow face,
and the broken career that his looks and hints suggested, or it made one
remember them and think the more of him. But the things themselves were
interesting, and Witching Hill had more possibilities when we sallied
forth together at one o'clock.

It was the height of such a June as the old century could produce up to
the last. The bald red houses, too young to show a shoot of creeper, or
a mellow tone from doorstep to chimney-pot, glowed like clowns' pokers
in the ruthless sun. The shade of some stately elms, on a bit of old
road between the two new ones of the Estate, appealed sharply to my
awakened sense of contrast. It was all familiar ground to me, of course,