h a
rising voice. "Do you know where he went to?"

"To Pendragon Park, sir," said the servant, rather sombrely, and began
to close the door.

Kidd started a little.

"Did he go with Mrs--with the rest of the party?" he asked rather
vaguely.

"No, sir," said the man shortly; "he stayed behind, and then went out
alone." And he shut the door, brutally, but with an air of duty not
done.

The American, that curious compound of impudence and sensitiveness,
was annoyed. He felt a strong desire to hustle them all along a bit
and teach them business habits; the hoary old dog and the grizzled,
heavy-faced old butler with his prehistoric shirt-front, and the drowsy
old moon, and above all the scatter-brained old philosopher who couldn't
keep an appointment.

"If that's the way he goes on he deserves to lose his wife's purest
devotion," said Mr Calhoun Kidd. "But perhaps he's gone over to make
a row. In that case I reckon a man from the Western Sun will be on the
spot."

And turning the corner by the open lodge-gates, he set off, stumping up
the long avenue of black pine-woods that pointed in abrupt perspective
towards the inner gardens of Pendragon Park. The trees were as black and
orderly as plumes upon a hearse; there were still a few stars. He was
a man with more literary than direct natural associations; the word
"Ravenswood" came into his head repeatedly. It was partly the raven
colour of the pine-woods; but partly also an indescribable atmosphere
almost described in Scott's great tragedy; the smell of something that
died in the eighteenth century; the smell of dank gardens and broken
urns, of wrongs that will never now be righted; of something that is
none the less incurably sad because it is strangely unreal.

More than once, as he went up that strange, black road of tragic
artifice, he stopped, startled, thinking he heard steps in front of him.
He could see nothing in front but the twin sombre walls of pine and
the wedge of starlit sky above them. At first he thought he must have
fancied it or been mocked by a mere echo of his own tramp. But as he
went on he was more and more inclined to conclude, with the remains of
his reason, that there really were other feet upon the road. He thought
hazily of ghosts; and was surprised how swiftly he could see the
image of an appropriate and local ghost, one with a face as white as
Pierrot's, but patched with black. The apex of the triangle of dark-blue
sky was growing brig