“Yes.  I know my way, thanks, sir,” Tom answered—­

And, thus dismissed, went on upstairs, carrying the silver flat candlestick, while his shadow, black on the panelled wall, mounted beside him grotesquely prancing step by step.

The furnishing of his room was of a piece with all below, solid yet not uncomely.  It included a four-post bed of generous proportions, hangings, curtains and covers of chintz, over which faded purple and crimson roses were flung broadcast on a honey-yellow ground.  The colourings were discreetly cheerful, the atmosphere not unpleasantly warm, the quiet, save for the creaking of a board as he crossed the floor, unbroken.  Outwardly all invited to peaceful slumber.  And Tom felt more than ready to profit by that invitation this last night on shore, last night in England.  His attention had been upon the stretch for a good many hours now, since that—­after all rather upsetting—­good-bye to home and family at Canton Magna, following an early and somewhat peripatetic breakfast.  Notwithstanding his excellent health and youthful energy, mind and body alike were somewhat spent.  He made short work of preparation, slipped in between the fine cool linen sheets, and laid his brown head upon the soft billowing pillows, impatient neither to think nor feel any more but simply to sleep.

For some two hours or so he did sleep, though not without phantasmagoria queerly disturbing.  The sweep of his visions was wide, ranging from that redoubtable county lady, Harriet Cowden nee Verity—­first cousin of his father, the Archdeacon, and half-sister to his host—­in her violet-ink hued gown, to fury of internecine strife amid the mountain fastnesses of Afghanistan,—­from the austere and wistful beauty of the grey, long-backed Norman Abbey rising above the roofs and chimneys of the little English market-town, to the fierce hectic splendour of Eastern cities blistering in the implacable sun-glare of the Indian plains.  Days on the Harchester playing fields, days on the river at Oxford, and still earlier days in the Rectory nursery at home; bringing with them sense of small bitter sorrows, small glorious triumphs, of laughter and uproarious fun, of sentimental passages at balls, picnics, garden parties, too, with charmingly pretty maidens who, in all probability, he would never clap eyes on again—­all these, and impressions even more illusive and fugitive, playing hide-and-seek among the mazelike convolutions of his all too active brain.

Then, on a sudden, he started up in bed, aware of external noise and movement which brought him instantly, almost painfully, broad awake.

For a quite appreciable length of time, while he sat upright in the warm darkness, Tom failed either to locate the noise which had thus roused him, or to interpret its meaning.  It appeared to him to start at the river foreshore, pass across the garden, into and through the ground-floor suite of rooms and corridor which Sir Charles had indicated as reserved to his particular use.—­What on earth could it be?  What did it remind him of?—­Why, surely—­with a start of incredulous recognition—­the sound of hoofs, though strangely confused and muffled, such as a mob of scared, over-driven horses might make, floundering fetlock deep in loose sand.