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way, and return them to the castle when he went back to work. So he crossed the court (with which his own dealings were confined to cutting and rolling the turf and applying whitewash with meticulous care to its lines), screwed the racket into its press, and gathered the garments together and draped them around him. Then he went on his way.
    He reached the main entrance to the castle grounds, and the lodge guarding it. The lodge, unlike the castle, had been built in an age in which symmetry was regarded as the only means to elegance, and it consisted of four diminutive rooms, each in a kind of pygmy Gothic, disposed two on one and two on the other side of the drive. This dwelling (or these dwellings) had no tenants, it having for long proved impossible to find human beings, however humble and however devoted to the Mullion name, to submit to a regular scamper through open air between supper and bed. Swithin had decided that when he took charge of things he would attach the one hutch to the other in the manner of Siamese twins – perhaps with a structure like the Rialto or (less ambitiously) the Bridge of Sighs as he had viewed these exotic structures in some picture-book.
    Now he turned left, and passed on his left hand (since it lay not without but within the curtilage of the castle) Mullion parish church. The vicar, Dr Atlay, was standing in the porch, affixing to it a notice announcing sundry dates upon which no divine service would take place. Dr Atlay was aware of Swithin Gore as not among the devout, and was the more punctilious with a heartily unaffected greeting as a result. Swithin had no quarrel with heartily unaffected greetings, and responded by waving Lord Wyndowe’s scarf. It would have been more appropriate, no doubt, to tug respectfully at a forelock – which was an object that a number of the older male inhabitants of Mullion continued to cultivate apparently to make this specific gesture of subjection possible. Swithin wound the scarf round his neck and walked on.
    A wayfarer hove into view. He was approaching with a gait that suggested (if this be conceivable) resignation tempered by mild grievance, and he was not to be mistaken for other than gentry. He might have been about ages with Lord Mullion (whom Swithin thought of as distinctly elderly) and he was dressed in country clothes of the sort that indefinably suggest the townee. (Or so Swithin, who cultivated social perceptions inappropriate to his station, sagely opined.)
    The stranger drew near, hesitated, and came to a halt. He studied Swithin. At least Swithin felt it to be that, although the glance was in fact entirely momentary. It was – the young man somewhat confusedly felt – as if here was somebody with a trained eye of an unusual sort.
    â€˜Good morning,’ the stranger said – and it was to be observed that his mild pedestrianism had put him slightly out of breath. ‘Is it possible that I am speaking to Lord Wyndowe?’
    â€˜I’m not Lord Wyndowe. I’m one of the under-gardeners.’ Swithin managed to provide this correction in a wholly composed manner, although he thought the question addressed to him excessively odd. Then he suddenly realized what must have occasioned it. Here he was, virtually within the purlieus of Mullion Castle, carrying a tennis racket and pretty well swathed in garments tagged all over with miscellaneous armorial emblazonments. He had, in fact, been sailing along under false colours. His first impulse was to explain to the stranger how this state of affairs had come about. But he resisted this – it is to be feared for no better reason than that it was more fun to leave the mystery momentarily unresolved. ‘Can I help you in any way?’ he asked. The stranger took this further perplexity (since the idiom was not quite a gardener’s, whether under or otherwise) commendably in his stride.
    â€˜I don’t want to be a nuisance,’ he said. ‘But