‘I like their sixpences ever so much.’

’Young sonny, don’t you answer up to me when you baint in the story—­stopping my words in that fashion.  I won’t have it, David.  Now up in the tallet with ye, there’s a good boy, and down with another lock or two of hay—­as fast as you can do it for me.’

The boy vanished under the archway, and the hostler followed at his heels.  Meanwhile the carriage bearing Mr. Mountclere and Sol was speeding on its way to Enckworth.  When they reached the spot at which the road forked into two, they left the Knollsea route, and keeping thence under the hills for the distance of five or six miles, drove into Lord Mountclere’s park.  In ten minutes the house was before them, framed in by dripping trees.

Mountclere jumped out, and entered without ceremony.  Sol, being anxious to know if Lord Mountclere was there, ordered the coachman to wait a few moments.  It was now nearly eight o’clock, and the smoke which ascended from the newly-lit fires of the Court painted soft blue tints upon the brown and golden leaves of lofty boughs adjoining.

‘O, Ethelberta!’ said Sol, as he regarded the fair prospect.

The gravel of the drive had been washed clean and smooth by the night’s rain, but there were fresh wheelmarks other than their own upon the track.  Yet the mansion seemed scarcely awake, and stillness reigned everywhere around.

Not more than three or four minutes had passed when the door was opened for Mountclere, and he came hastily from the doorsteps.

‘I must go on with you,’ he said, getting into the vehicle.  ‘He’s gone.’

‘Where—­to Knollsea?’ said Sol.

‘Yes,’ said Mountclere.  ‘Now, go ahead to Knollsea!’ he shouted to the man.  ’To think I should be fooled like this!  I had no idea that he would be leaving so soon!  We might perhaps have been here an hour earlier by hard striving.  But who was to dream that he would arrange to leave it at such an unearthly time of the morning at this dark season of the year?  Drive—­drive!’ he called again out of the window, and the pace was increased.

‘I have come two or three miles out of my way on account of you,’ said Sol sullenly.  ’And all this time lost.  I don’t see why you wanted to come here at all.  I knew it would be a waste of time.’

‘Damn it all, man,’ said Mountclere; ’it is no use for you to be angry with me!’

’I think it is, for ‘tis you have brought me into this muddle,’ said Sol, in no sweeter tone.  ’Ha, ha!  Upon my life I should be inclined to laugh, if I were not so much inclined to do the other thing, at Berta’s trick of trying to make close family allies of such a cantankerous pair as you and I!  So much of one mind as we be, so alike in our ways of living, so close connected in our callings and principles, so matched in manners and customs! ’twould be a thousand pities to part us—­hey, Mr. Mountclere!’