e drive, sir?'

Midmore looked in the fading light. The neat gravel was pitted with
large roundish holes, and there was a punch or two of the same sort
on the lawn.

'That's the 'unt comin' 'ome,' Rhoda explained. 'Your pore dear auntie
always let 'em use our drive for a short cut after the Colonel died. The
Colonel wouldn't so much because he preserved; but your auntie was
always an 'orsewoman till 'er sciatica.'

'Isn't there some one who can rake it over or--or something?' said
Midmore vaguely.

'Oh yes. You'll never see it in the morning, but--you was out when they
came 'ome an' Mister Fisher--he's the Master--told me to tell you with
'is compliments that if you wasn't preservin' and cared to 'old to the
old understanding', is gravel-pit is at your service same as before. 'E
thought, perhaps, you mightn't know, and it 'ad slipped my mind to tell
you. It's good gravel, Mister Fisher's, and it binds beautiful on the
drive. We 'ave to draw it, o' course, from the pit, but--'

Midmore looked at her helplessly.

'Rhoda,' said he, 'what am I supposed to do?'

'Oh, let 'em come through,' she replied. 'You never know. You may want
to 'unt yourself some day.'

That evening it rained and his misery returned on him, the worse for
having been diverted. At last he was driven to paw over a few score
books in a panelled room called the library, and realised with horror
what the late Colonel Werf's mind must have been in its prime. The
volumes smelt of a dead world as strongly as they did of mildew. He
opened and thrust them back, one after another, till crude coloured
illustrations of men on horses held his eye. He began at random and read
a little, moved into the drawing-room with the volume, and settled down
by the fire still reading. It was a foul world into which he peeped for
the first time--a heavy-eating, hard-drinking hell of horse-copers,
swindlers, matchmaking mothers, economically dependent virgins selling
themselves blushingly for cash and lands: Jews, tradesmen, and an
ill-considered spawn of Dickens-and-horsedung characters (I give
Midmore's own criticism), but he read on, fascinated, and behold, from
the pages leaped, as it were, the brother to the red-eyed man of the
brook, bellowing at a landlord (here Midmore realised that _he_ was that
very animal) for new barns; and another man who, like himself again,
objected to hoof-marks on gravel. Outrageous as thought and conception
were, the stuff seemed to hav