‘’Myes, I suppose you are right,’ Mrs Tresize assented with a little sigh, and forthwith shifted the conversation.  ’But taste your brandy, please, and tell me how you like it—­though, to be sure, it won’t compare with Squire Peneluna’s.’

It was, nevertheless, good sound brandy, genuine juice of the grape, soft and well-matured.  The doctor after a sip nodded his approval.

‘I dare say, now,’ she went on, ’you’re accustomed to this sort of thing?  I mean, you must pass a good many nights, year’s end to year’s end, in other folk’s parlours. . . .’  She broke off, and this time with a genuine sigh.  ’I used to wonder in days gone by, if ever you’d be sitting here.  I used to picture you . . . and now it’s for a robber you’re waiting!’ She ended with a laugh, yet turned her face away.

But either the doctor was nettled or his mind refused to be diverted by small talk from the business in hand.  He somewhat curtly commanded Mrs Tresize to indicate on the gun-rack the weapons her late husband had commonly used, and to find him powder and shot.  For a moment she pouted her lips mutinously, but ended by obeying him, with a shrug of her handsome shoulders.

She stood watching him while he carefully loaded the weapons and rammed home the wads.  It is possible that she had a mind to relent, and suggest his whiling the time away with a game of dominoes.  At any rate she went so far as to hazard—­with a glance at the ivory tablets, and another at the hearth and the elbow-chairs—­that he would find the waiting tedious.

‘Not if you can supply me with a book, ma’am,’ he answered, laying the two guns on the table, after sweeping the dominoes aside to make room for them.

Mrs Tresize left the room and returned bearing a volume—­Blair’s Grave.  She understood (she said) that the doctor preferred serious reading.

‘Among all the poets that ever wrote,’ said Doctor Unonius blandly, ’with the possible exception of Young, I have the greatest contempt for Blair.  He has the one unpardonable fault (not the one mentioned by Horace, though he has that, too):  he is dishonest.  The finest passage in the Grave is impudently stolen from Dryden, and marred in the stealing.  But I thank Heaven, ma’am, that I can read any printed matter; and when Blair disgusts me I can always take a satisfactory revenge by turning him into Latin Elegiacs; by turning him, so to speak, in his Grave,’ concluded the doctor grimly.

This routed the lady, but she managed to get in the last word.  ‘Well, I can’t pretend to understand you and your learning,’ she answered tartly; ’but since we seem to be thanking Heaven, I’ll thank it that I have a fire lit in my bedroom.  It’s the room just overhead, and I’m going to ask Tryphena to sleep with me when she has put up the bolts.  Or, maybe, we shall sit up there for a while and talk.  But anyhow, we are light sleepers, the both of us, and if there’s any trouble you have only to call.  Good-night.’