ther the whole
original property and nothing else, was outlined and filled in, and the
rest left as white as age permitted. It was like a map of India upside
down. The great house was curiously situated in the apex, but across the
road a clump of shrubberies stood for Ceylon. Our present Estate was at
the thick end, as Delavoye explained, and it was a thrilling moment when
he laid his nail upon the Turkish Pavilion, actually so marked, and we
looked out into the moonlit garden and beheld its indubitable site. The
tunnel was not marked. But Delavoye ran his finger to the left, and
stopped on an emblem illegibly inscribed in small faint ancient print.

"It's 'Steward's Lodge,'" said he as I peered in vain; "you shall have a
magnifying glass, if you like, to show there's no deception. But the
story I'm afraid you'll have to take on trust for the moment. If you
want to see chapter and verse, apply for a reader's ticket and I'll show
you both any day at the B.M. I only struck them myself this afternoon,
in a hairy tome called 'The Mulcaster Peerage'--and a whole page of
sub-titles. They're from one of the epistles of the dear old sinner
himself, written as though other people's money had never melted in his
noble fist. I won't spoil it by misquotation. But you'll find that there
was once an unjust steward, who robbed the wicked lord of this very
vineyard, and then locked himself into his lodge, and committed suicide
rather than face the fearful music!"

I did not look at Delavoye; but I felt his face glowing like a live coal
close to mine.

"This road isn't marked," I said as though I had been simply buried in
the plan.

"Naturally; it wasn't made. Would you like to see where it ran?"

"I shouldn't mind," I said with the same poor quality of indifference.

He took a bit of old picture-rod, which he kept for a ruler on his desk,
and ran a pair of parallel lines in blue pencil from west to east. The
top line came just under the factor's cottage.

"It's in this very road!" I exclaimed.

"Not only that," returned Delavoye, "but if you go by the scale, and
pace the distance, you'll find that the Steward's Lodge was on the
present site of the house with red blinds!"

And he turned away to fill another pipe, as though finely determined not
to crow or glow in my face. But I did not feel myself an object for
magnanimity.

"I thought it was only your ignoble kinsman, as you call him," I said,
"who was to haunt and influenc