It seemed an extraordinarily deserted road.  There were no lights from houses, so far as he could make out, and the four miles that had been declared at their last stopping-place to separate them from the next village appeared already more like five or six.  Certainly the three of them had between two and three shillings, all told; there was no actual need of a workhouse just yet, but naturally it was wished to spend as little as possible.

Then on a sudden he caught a glimpse of a light burning somewhere, that appeared and vanished again as he moved, and fifty yards more brought him to a wide sweep, a pair of gate-posts with the gate fastened back, and a lodge on the left-hand side.  So much he could make out dimly through the November darkness; and as he stood there hesitating, he thought he could see somewhere below him a few other lights burning through the masses of leafless trees through which the drive went downhill.

He knew very well by experience that lodge-keepers were, taken altogether, perhaps the most unsympathetic class in the community. (They live, you see, right on the high road, and see human nature at its hottest and crossest as well as its most dishonest.) Servants at back doors were, as a rule, infinitely more obliging; and, as obviously this was the entrance to some big country house, the right thing to do would be to steal past the lodge on tiptoe and seek his fortune amongst the trees.  Yet he hesitated; the house might be half a mile away, for all he knew; and, certainly there was a hospitable look about the fastened-back gate.

There came a gust of wind over the hills behind him, laden with wet....  He turned, went up to the lodge door and knocked.

He could hear someone moving about inside, and just as he was beginning to wonder whether his double tap had been audible, the door opened and disclosed a woman in an apron.

“Can you very kindly direct me—­” began Frank politely.

The woman jerked her head sharply in the direction of the house.

“Straight down the hill,” she said.  “Them’s the orders.”

“But—­”

It was no good; the door was shut again in his face, and he stood alone in the dark.

This was all very unusual.  Lodge-keepers did not usually receive “orders” to send tramps, without credentials, on to the house which the lodge was supposed to guard....  That open gate, then, must have been intentional.  Plainly, however, he must take her at her word; and as he tramped down the drive, he began to form theories.  It must be a fanatic of some kind who lived here, and he inclined to consider the owner as probably an eccentric old lady with a fad, and a large number of lap-dogs.

As he came nearer, through the trees, he became still more astonished, for as the branches thinned, he became aware of lights burning at such enormous distances apart that the building seemed more like a village than a house.