Two minutes later he pulled the left rein and we swung through an
open gateway and were rolling over soft gravel. Tall bushes of
laurel on either hand glinted back the lights of the tilbury, and
presently around a sweep of the drive I saw a window shining.
Mr. Rogers pulled up once more.

"Jump out and take the path to the left. It'll bring you out almost
facing the front door. Wait among the laurels there."

I climbed down and drew my rug about me as he drove on and I heard
the tilbury's wheels come to a halt on the gravel before the house.
Then, following the path which wound about a small shrubbery, I came
to the edge of the gravel sweep before the porch just as a groom took
the mare and cart from him and led them around to the left, towards
the stables. I saw this distinctly, for on the right of the porch,
where there ran a pretty deep verandah, each window on the ground
floor was lit and flung its light across the gravel to the laurel
behind which I crouched. There were in all five windows; of which
three seemed to belong to an empty room, and two to another filled
with people. The windows of this one stood wide open, and the racket
within was prodigious. Also the company seemed to consist entirely
of men. But what surprised me most was to see that the tables at
which these guests drank and supped--as the clatter of knives and
plates told me, and the shouting of toasts--were drawn up in a
semicircle about a tall bed-canopy reaching almost to the ceiling in
the far right-hand corner. The bed itself was hidden from me by the
broad backs of two sportsmen seated in line with it and nursing a
bottle apiece under their chairs.

Now while I wondered, Mr. Jack Rogers passed briskly through the room
with the closed windows towards this chamber of revelry, preceded by
an elderly woman with a smoking dish in her hands. I could not see
the doorway between the two rooms; but the company announced his
appearance with a shout, and several guests pushing back their chairs
and rising to welcome him, in the same instant were disclosed to me,
first, the pale face of the Rev. Mr. Whitmore under a sporting print
by the wall opposite, and next, reclining in the bed, the most
extraordinary figure of a woman.

So much of her as appeared above the bedclothes was arrayed in an
orange-coloured dressing-gown and a night-cap the frills of which
towered over a face remarkable in many ways, but chiefly for its
broad masculine f