Molehill, with the help of a gardener and a simple village maid, her
niece, who smashed all the crockery and nearly drove the Colonel mad
by banging the doors, shifting his papers and even dusting his trays
of Roman coins) actually confided to some friends in the village that
she thought the poor dear gentleman was going mad. When questioned on
what she based this belief, she replied that he would walk up and down
the oak-panelled dining-room by the hour together, and then, when he
got tired of that exercise, whereby, said Mrs. Jobson, he had already
worn a groove in the new Turkey carpet, he would take out a "rokey"
(foggy) looking bit of a picture, set it upon a chair and stare at it
through his fingers, shaking his head and muttering all the while.
Then--further and conclusive proof of a yielding intellect--he would
get a half-sheet of paper with some writing on it and put it on the
mantelpiece and stare at that. Next he would turn it upside down and
stare at it so, then sideways, then all ways, then he would hold it
before a looking-glass and stare at the looking-glass, and so on. When
asked how she knew all this, she confessed that her niece Jane had
seen it through the key-hole, not once but often.

Of course, as the practised and discerning reader will clearly
understand, this meant only that when walking and wearing out the
carpet the Colonel was thinking of Ida. When contemplating the
painting that she had given him, he was admiring her work and trying
to reconcile the admiration with his conscience and his somewhat
peculiar views of art. And when glaring at the paper, he was vainly
endeavouring to make head or tale of the message written to his son on
the night before his execution by Sir James de la Molle in the reign
of Charles I., confidently believed by Ida to contain a key to the
whereabouts of the treasure he was supposed to have secreted.

Of course the tale of this worthy soul, Mrs. Jobson, did not lose in
the telling, and when it reached Ida's ears, which it did at last
through the medium of George--for in addition to his numberless other
functions, George was the sole authorised purveyor of village and
county news--it read that Colonel Quaritch had gone raving mad.

Ten minutes afterwards this raving lunatic arrived at the Castle in
dress clothes and his right mind, whereon Ida promptly repeated her
thrilling history, somewhat to the subsequent discomfort of Mrs.
Jobson and Jane.

No one, as some