Down the centre of the central garden path, preceded by a blue cloud
from a cigarette, was walking a gentleman who evidently understood all
the relish of a garden in the very early morning. He was a slim yet
satisfied figure, clad in a suit of pale-grey tweed, so subdued that
the pattern was imperceptible--a costume that was casual but not by
any means careless. His face, which was reflective and somewhat
over-refined, was the face of a quite elderly man, though his stringy
hair and moustache were still quite yellow. A double eye-glass, with a
broad, black ribbon, drooped from his aquiline nose, and he smiled, as
he communed with himself, with a self-content which was rare and almost
irritating. The straw panama on his head was many shades shabbier than
his clothes, as if he had caught it up by accident.

It needed the full shock of the huge shadow of MacIan, falling across
his sunlit path, to rouse him from his smiling reverie. When this had
fallen on him he lifted his head a little and blinked at the intruders
with short-sighted benevolence, but with far less surprise than might
have been expected. He was a gentleman; that is, he had social presence
of mind, whether for kindness or for insolence.

"Can I do anything for you?" he said, at last.

MacIan bowed. "You can extend to us your pardon," he said, for he also
came of a whole race of gentlemen--of gentlemen without shirts to their
backs. "I am afraid we are trespassing. We have just come over the
wall."

"Over the wall?" repeated the smiling old gentleman, still without
letting his surprise come uppermost.

"I suppose I am not wrong, sir," continued MacIan, "in supposing that
these grounds inside the wall belong to you?"

The man in the panama looked at the ground and smoked thoughtfully for a
few moments, after which he said, with a sort of matured conviction:

"Yes, certainly; the grounds inside the wall really belong to me, and
the grounds outside the wall, too."

"A large proprietor, I imagine," said Turnbull, with a truculent eye.

"Yes," answered the old gentleman, looking at him with a steady smile.
"A large proprietor."

Turnbull's eye grew even more offensive, and he began biting his red
beard; but MacIan seemed to recognize a type with which he could deal
and continued quite easily:

"I am sure that a man like you will not need to be told that one sees
and does a good many things that do not get into the newspapers. Things
which, on the