it is to be born without fear. So
he stood still, and in a voice which had something of a quaver in it,
called out:

"Who is there?"

In the wood a bird gave a single call like the note of a flute, the wind
murmured in the tall avenue of trees, a frog splashed in the still
waters of the lake, but there was no sound of human life. Glancing
cautiously into the wood, the butler could no longer see anything
crouching in the path. The man--if it had been a man--had vanished.

"It may have been my fancy," muttered the butler, speaking aloud as
though to reassure himself by hearing his own voice.

He walked quickly onward, and was relieved when he had left the wood
behind him, and could see the faint lights of the village twinkling
beyond the fields. Crossing a footbridge which spanned a narrow stream
at the bottom of the meadows, Tufnell climbed over a stile, and walked
along the road on the other side until he reached a cottage standing
some distance back from the road at the summit of a gentle slope.
Tufnell ascended the slope and knocked loudly at the cottage door.

After the lapse of a few moments the door was opened by a woman with a
candle in her hand--a stout countrywoman of forty, with a curved nose,
prominent teeth, and hair screwed up in a tight knob at the back of her
head. Her small grey eyes, scanning the visitor at the door, showed both
surprise and deference. The butler of the moat-house was not in the
habit of mixing with the villagers, and by them he was accounted
something of a personage. He not only shone with the reflected glory of
the big house, but was respected on his own merit as a "snug" man, who
had saved money, and had a little property of his own.

"Is your husband at home, Mrs. Lumbe?" he asked, in response to her mute
glance of inquiry. He spoke condescendingly, like a man who recognized
the social gulf between them, but believed in being polite to the lower
orders.

"Yes, he is in, Mr. Tufnell. Will you come inside?"

The butler rubbed his boots carefully on the doormat, and followed the
woman down a narrow passage to a small sitting-room at the end of it,
where a man was sitting, reading a newspaper and smoking a pipe.

"Robert," said the woman, "here is Mr. Tufnell to see you."

The man looked up from his newspaper in some surprise, and got up to
greet his visitor. He was not in uniform, and his rough, ungainly figure
and round red face revealed the countryman, but from the crown o