lans are embarrassed by the unpunctuality of others.
He was fully attired, hob-nailed shoes, leggings, leather coat and cap,
gloves, scarf round his throat and all--and he behaved as if there was
not a minute to lose. He had barely time to shake perfunctorily the
hand Thorpe offered him, and utter an absent-minded "How are you this
morning?"

To the valet, who hurried forward to open the outer door, bearing his
master's gun and a camp-stool, he said reproachfully, "We are very late
today, Barnes." They went out, and began striding down the avenue of
trees at such a pace that the keeper and his following of small boys and
dogs, who joined them near the road, were forced into a trot to keep up
with it.

Thorpe had fancied, somehow, that a day's shooting would afford
exceptional opportunities for quiet and intimate talk with his host,
but he perceived very soon that this was not to be the case. They walked
together for half a mile, it is true, along a rural bye-road first and
then across some fields, but the party was close at their heels, and
Plowden walked so fast that conversation of any sort, save an occasional
remark about the birds and the covers between him and the keeper, was
impracticable. The Hon. Balder suddenly turned up in the landscape,
leaning against a gate set in a hedgerow, and their course was deflected
toward him, but even when they came up to him, the expedition seemed
to gain nothing of a social character. The few curt words that were
exchanged, as they halted here to distribute cartridges and hold brief
consultation, bore exclusively upon the subject in hand.

The keeper assumed now an authority which Thorpe, breathing heavily over
the unwonted exercise and hoping for nothing so much as that they would
henceforth take things easy, thought intolerable. He was amazed that
the two brothers should take without cavil the arbitrary orders of this
elderly peasant. He bade Lord Plowden proceed to a certain point in one
direction, and that nobleman, followed by his valet with the gun and
the stool, set meekly off without a word. Balder, with equal docility,
vaulted the gate, and moved away down the lane at the bidding of the
keeper. Neither of them had intervened to mitigate the destiny of their
guest, or displayed any interest as to what was going to become of him.

Thorpe said to himself that he did not like this--and though afterward,
when he had also climbed the gate and taken up his station under a
c