ly
rising in the south-west; the bleating of sheep at the ancient homestead
half a mile away is the only sound to be heard. As the sun goes down
to-night it resembles a great ship on fire amidst the breakers on a
rockbound coast; for the western sky is dashed with fleecy clouds, like
the spray that beats against the chalk cliffs on the shore of the mighty
Atlantic; and amid the last plunges of the doomed vessel the spray is
tinged redder and redder, ere with her human cargo she disappears amid
the surf. But no sooner has she sunk into the abyss than the foam and
the fierce breakers die away, and a wondrous calm broods over all
things. In twenty minutes' time nothing is left in the western sky but a
tiny bar of golden cloud that cannot yet quite die away, reminding me,
as I still thought about the burning ship and her ill-fated crew, of

"the golden key
Which opes the palace of Eternity."

But eastwards, above the old legendary White Horse, the "Empress of the
Night," serene and proudly pale, is driving her car across the
darkening skies.

[Illustration: Ablington Manor 399.png]

CHAPTER XVII.

AUTUMN.

I.

It is in the autumn that life in an old manor house on the Cotswolds has
its greatest charm; for one of the chief characteristics of a house in
the depths of the country surrounded by a broad manor is the game. The
whole atmosphere of such a place savours of rabbits and hares and
partridges. There may be no pheasant-rearing and comparatively little
game of any kind, yet the place is, nevertheless, associated with sport
with the gun. Ten to one there are guns, old and new, hanging up in the
hall or the smoking-room, and perhaps fishing-rods too. There is a bond
between the house and the fields around, and the connecting link is the
game. Time was when the squire in these English villages lived on the
produce of the estate: game, fish, and fowl, and the stock at the farm
supplied his simple wants throughout the year. Huge game larders are yet
to be seen in the lower regions of the manor house; you must pass
through them to reach the still more ample wine cellars. Nearer London
there is not much connection nowadays between the house and the
land--you must walk on the roads; but away in the country it is over the
broad fields that you roam. Even on a small manor of two thousand acres
you may walk a dozen miles in an afternoon and not pass the
boundary fence.

It is very surp