“Ah?  Well, it will make no difference,” he said; and we resumed our way.

As we climbed the last slope under the terraces of the house, I caught sight of my father leaning by a balustrade high above us, at the head of a double flight of broad stone steps, and splicing the top joint of a trout-rod he had broken the day before.  He must have caught sight of us almost at the moment when we emerged from the woods.

He showed no surprise at all.  Only as I led my guests up the steps he set down his work and, raising a hand, bent to them in a very courteous welcome.

“Good morning, lad!  And good morning to those you bring, whencesoever they come.”

“They come, sir,” I answered “in Jo Pomery’s ketch Gauntlet, I believe from Italy; and with a message for you.”

“My father turned his gaze from me to the spokesman at my elbow.  His eyebrows lifted with surprise and sudden pleasure.

“Hey?” he exclaimed.  “Is it my old friend—­”

But the other, before his name could be uttered, lifted a hand.

“My name is the Brother Basilio now, Sir John:  no other am I permitted to remember.  The peace of God be with you, and upon your house!”

“And with you, Brother Basilio, since you will have it so:  and with all your company!  You bear a message for me?  But first you must break your fast.”  He turned to lead the way to the house.

“We have eaten already, Sir John.  As soon as your leisure serves, we would deliver our message.”

My father called to Billy Priske—­who hung in the rear of the monks—­ bidding him fetch my uncle Gervase in from the stables to the State Room, and so, without another word, motioned to his visitors to follow.  To this day I can hear the shuffle of their bare feet on the steps and slabs of the terrace as they hurried after him to keep up with his long strides.

In the great entrance-hall he paused to lift a bunch of rusty keys off their hook, and, choosing the largest, unlocked the door of the State Room.  The lock had been kept well oiled, for Billy Priske entered it twice daily; in the morning, to open a window or two, and at sunset, to close them.  But it is a fact that I had not crossed its threshold a score of times in my life, though I ran by it, maybe, as many times a day; nor (as I believe) had my father entered it for years.  Yet it was the noblest room in the house, in length seventy-five feet, panelled high in dark oak and cedar and adorned around each panel with carvings of Grinling Gibbons—­festoons and crowns and cherub-faces and intricate baskets of flowers.  Each panel held a portrait, and over every panel, in faded gilt against the morning sun, shone an imperial crown.  The windows were draped with hangings of rotten velvet.  At the far end on a dais stood a porphyry table, and behind it, facing down the room, a single chair, or throne, also of porphyry and rudely carved.  For the rest the room held nothing but dust—­dust so thick that our visitors’ naked feet left imprints upon it as they huddled after their leader to the dais, where my father took his seat, after beckoning me forward to stand on his right.