ely decorated with crockets and gargoyles,
ravished from some mediaeval church. The place seemed hidden away, being
not only concealed in the trees of the garden, but, on the side on which
I approached it, buried as high as the eaves by the rising of the
ground. About the walls of the garden there went a line of well-grown
elms and beeches, the first entirely bare, the last still pretty well
covered with red leaves, and the centre was occupied with a thicket of
laurel and holly, in which I could see arches cut and paths winding.

I was now within hail of my friends, and not much the better. The house
appeared asleep; yet if I attempted to wake any one, I had no guarantee
it might not prove either the aunt with the gold eye-glasses (whom I
could only remember with trembling), or some ass of a servant-maid who
should burst out screaming at sight of me. Higher up I could hear and
see a shepherd shouting to his dogs and striding on the rough sides of
the mountain, and it was clear I must get to cover without loss of time.
No doubt the holly thickets would have proved a very suitable retreat,
but there was mounted on the wall a sort of signboard not uncommon in
the country of Great Britain, and very damping to the adventurous:
SPRING GUNS AND MAN TRAPS was the legend that it bore. I have learned
since that these advertisements, three times out of four, were in the
nature of Quaker guns on a disarmed battery, but I had not learned it
then, and even so, the odds would not have been good enough. For a
choice, I would a hundred times sooner be returned to Edinburgh Castle
and my corner in the bastion, than to leave my foot in a steel trap or
have to digest the contents of an automatic blunderbuss. There was but
one chance left--that Ronald or Flora might be the first to come abroad;
and in order to profit by this chance, if it occurred, I got me on the
cope of the wall in the place where it was screened by the thick
branches of a beech, and sat there waiting.

As the day wore on, the sun came very pleasantly out. I had been awake
all night, I had undergone the most violent agitations of mind and body,
and it is not so much to be wondered at, as it was exceedingly unwise
and foolhardy, that I should have dropped into a doze. From this I
awakened to the characteristic sound of digging, looked down, and saw
immediately below me the back view of a gardener in a stable waistcoat.
Now he would appear steadily immersed in his business;