On the following day, as I was going to the stables (which were a few hundred yards below the house) I found my picturesque Italian in the back garden, singing a barcarole to the accompaniment of a guitar.  But as he had complied with the condition of which I had informed him, I made no objection.  So far from that I gave him a shilling, and as the maids (who were greatly taken with his appearance) got up a collection for him and gave him a feed, he did not do badly.

A few days later, while out riding, I called at the station for an evening paper, and there he was again, “touching his guitar,” and singing something that sounded very sentimental.

“That fellow is like a bad shilling,” I said to one of the porters—­“always turning up.”

“He is never away.  I think he must have taken it into his head to live here.”

“What does he do?”

“Oh, he just hangs about, and watches the trains, as if he had never seen any before.  I suppose there are none in the country he comes from.  Between whiles he sometimes plays on his banjo and sings a bit for us.  I cannot quite make him out; but as he is very quiet and well-behaved, and never interferes with nobody, it is no business of mine.”

Neither was it any business of mine; so after buying my paper I dismissed the subject from my mind and rode on to Kingscote.

As a rule, I found the morning papers quite as much as I could struggle with; but at this time a poisoning case was being tried which interested me so much that while it lasted I sent for or fetched an evening paper every afternoon.  The day after my conversation with the porter I adopted the former course, the day after that I adopted the latter, and, contrary to my usual practice, I walked.

There were two ways from Kingscote to the station; one by the road, the other by a little-used footpath.  I went by the road, and as I was buying my paper at Smith’s bookstall the station-master told me that Mr. Fortescue had returned by a train which came in about ten minutes previously.

“He must be walking home by the fields, then, or we should have met,” I said; and pocketing my paper, I set off with the intention of overtaking him.

As I have already observed, the field way was little frequented, most people preferring the high-road as being equally direct and, except in the height of summer, both dryer and less lonesome.

After traversing two or three fields the foot-path ran through a thick wood, once part of the great forest of Essex, then descending into a deep hollow, it made a sudden bend and crossed a rambling old brook by a dilapidated bridge.

As I reached the bend I heard a shout, and looking down I saw what at first sight (the day being on the wane and the wood gloomy) I took to be three men amusing themselves with a little cudgel-play.  But a second glance showed me that something much more like murder than cudgel-play was going on; and shortening my Irish blackthorn, I rushed at breakneck speed down the hollow.