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and surveyed them with awe, but they did not speak. Even if Ezra had not forbidden them to do so, they would not have presumed, for there was a strangeness there. It was like standing on the frontier of a foreign country. You would have to know something of the customs and a few words of the language before you dared to go over.
    An exciting tunnel of yew trees beside the house led to the front garden. At the lower end of the sloping lawn was a mulberry tree, its lower limbs held up by stakes of crotched wood. Its branches grew out from the main trunk in such a way that to climb the tree would be as easy as running upstairs. Timothy, who loved climbing trees, dared not look too long and they all ran determinedly past it to the part of the garden down below that they had not seen properly last night. They found it now to be a rough grassy slope planted with rhododendrons and azaleas and flaming with glorious colours. The path, with steps here and there, descended steeply among them and as they came down they could look right over the wall of the stableyard and see the river and the bridge and the stretch of the moor beyond. The road down which they had driven last night was looped like a ribbon round the shoulder of a hill that was blue and green with bluebells and bracken. Stone walls divided the wilderness into fields in which sheep were feeding, and cows and a few ponies.
    They sat down under a flame-coloured rhododendron and gazed, with the sun on their faces, and then they shut their eyes and listened. They could hear the voice of the little river as it tumbled over the stones in its shallow bed, the sheep bleating, the humming of the bees, but at first nothing else, and then suddenly there was the sound of a pony’s trotting feet and their eyes flew open. The little trap was coming down the hill at a brisk pace, Rob-Roy in fine fettle and the elderly gentleman apparently in fine fettle too, for he was sitting very upright with a tall hat set upon his head, his whip held upright like a king’s sceptre. As he rattled over the bridge they saw he was swaying a little as though in time to music. Could he be singing? It didn’t seem possible that so terrible and statuesque a person could be doing such an unsuitable thing, yet as the trap disappeared from sight and slowed up on the hill they heard the strains of
The British Grenadiers
floating up to them. They jumped up and raced down to the arched door in the wall, pulled it open and ran down the steps to the stableyard as he drove in, Absolom at their heels. The moment the elderly gentleman had pulled Rob-Roy to a standstill they had surrounded him.
    ‘Ah,’ he said, grimly surveying their eager anxious faces. ‘You slept well, I see. Breakfasted well also, I trust. I see no signs of fatigue or starvation upon your grubby faces. Robert, look after your pony. You three, carry up the groceries. The luggage follows in the carrier’s cart.’
    He stalked up the steps to the garden door with his hands folded in the small of his back and the three followed. His hack looked very grim, yet he had returned with a great many groceries, far more than he and Ezrawould need, and peeping into one bag Nan saw that it was full of dog biscuits. And what did he mean by the luggage following in the carrier’s cart? As they went up through the garden the church clock struck one, a gong boomed inside the house and he said, ‘Ah! Luncheon! I breakfasted early. What’s for luncheon?’
    ‘Fried steak and onions and rhubarb pie,’ said Nan.
    ‘Ah,’ said the elderly gentleman. ‘There is in my pocket a packet of peppermint lozenges for indigestion should the need for them subsequently arise.’
    Ten minutes later they were all sitting round the table in the cool panelled dining room, with steaming plates of steak and onions before them. Ezra, with a large apron tied over his shepherd’s smock, was handing spring greens and baked potatoes. Absolom was under the table with a dog