se of the aristocratic routine, he felt, did not
commend itself so warmly to him as did some others. Everybody else,
however, seemed to regard it as so wholly a matter of course that
Plowden should do as he liked, that he forbore formulating a complaint
even to himself.

At last, this nobleman's valet descended the stairs once more. "His
Lordship will be down very shortly now, sir," he declared--"and will you
be good enough to come into the gun-room, sir, and see the keeper?"

Thorpe followed him through a doorway under the staircase--the existence
of which he had not suspected--into a bare-looking apartment fitted like
a pantry with shelves. After the semi-gloom of the hall, it was almost
glaringly lighted. The windows and another door opened, he saw, upon a
court connected with the stable-yard. By this entrance, no doubt, had
come the keeper, a small, brown-faced, brown-clothed man of mature
years, with the strap of a pouch over his shoulder, who stood looking at
the contents of the shelves. He mechanically saluted Thorpe in turn, and
then resumed his occupation. There were numerous gun cases on the lower
shelf, and many boxes and bags above.

"Did his Lordship say what gun?" the keeper demanded of the valet. He
had a bright-eyed, intent glance, and his tone conveyed a sense of some
broad, impersonal, out-of-doors disdain for liveried house-men.

The valet, standing behind Thorpe, shrugged his shoulders and eloquently
shook his head.

"Do you like an 'ammerless, sir?" the keeper turned to Thorpe.

To his intense humiliation, Thorpe could not make out the meaning of the
query. "Oh, anything'll do for me," he said, awkwardly smiling. "It's
years since I've shot--I daresay one gun'll be quite the same as another
to me."

He felt the knowing bright eyes of the keeper taking all his
measurements as a sportsman. "You'd do best with 'B,' sir, I fancy," the
functionary decided at last, and his way of saying it gave Thorpe the
notion that "B" must be the weapon that was reserved for school-boys. He
watched the operation of putting the gun together, and then took it, and
laid it over his arm, and followed the valet out into the hall again, in
dignified silence. To the keeper's remark--"Mr. Balder has its mate with
him today, sir," he gave only a restrained nod.

There were even now whole minutes to wait before Lord Plowden appeared.
He came down the stairs then with the brisk, rather impatient air of a
busy man whose p