’Have you anything going to Knollsea this morning that I can get a lift in?’ said the pedestrian—­no other than Ethelberta’s father.

‘Nothing empty, that I know of.’

‘Or carrier?’

‘No.’

‘A matter of fifteen shillings, then, I suppose?’

’Yes—­no doubt.  But yond there’s a young man just now starting; he might not take it ill if ye were to ask him for a seat, and go halves in the hire of the trap.  Shall I call out?’

‘Ah, do.’

The hostler bawled to the stable-boy, who put the question to Christopher.  There was room for two in the dogcart, and Julian had no objection to save the shillings of a fellow-traveller who was evidently not rich.  When Chickerel mounted to his seat, Christopher paused to look at him as we pause in some enactment that seems to have been already before us in a dream long ago.  Ethelberta’s face was there, as the landscape is in the map, the romance in the history, the aim in the deed:  denuded, rayless, and sorry, but discernible.

For the moment, however, this did not occur to Julian.  He took the whip, the boy loosed his hold upon the horse, and they proceeded on their way.

‘What slap-dash jinks may there be going on at Knollsea, then, my sonny?’ said the hostler to the lad, as the dogcart and the backs of the two men diminished on the road.  ’You be a Knollsea boy:  have anything reached your young ears about what’s in the wind there, David Straw?’

’No, nothing:  except that ’tis going to be Christmas day in five weeks:  and then a hide-bound bull is going to be killed if he don’t die afore the time, and gi’ed away by my lord in three-pound junks, as a reward to good people who never curse and sing bad songs, except when they be drunk; mother says perhaps she will have some, and ’tis excellent if well stewed, mother says.’

’A very fair chronicle for a boy to give, but not what I asked for.  When you try to answer a old man’s question, always bear in mind what it was that old man asked.  A hide-bound bull is good when well stewed, I make no doubt—­for they who like it; but that’s not it.  What I said was, do you know why three fokes, a rich man, a middling man, and a poor man, should want horses for Knollsea afore seven o’clock in the morning on a blinking day in Fall, when everything is as wet as a dishclout, whereas that’s more than often happens in fine summer weather?’

‘No—­I don’t know, John hostler.’

’Then go home and tell your mother that ye be no wide-awake boy, and that old John, who went to school with her father afore she was born or thought o’, says so. . . .  Chok’ it all, why should I think there’s sommat going on at Knollsea?  Honest travelling have been so rascally abused since I was a boy in pinners, by tribes of nobodies tearing from one end of the country to t’other, to see the sun go down in salt water, or the moon play jack-lantern behind some rotten tower or other, that, upon my song, when life and death’s in the wind there’s no telling the difference!’