Paynter looked after her with a momentary curiosity, and when he turned
again the Squire had vanished into the hole in the wood.

"He's gone," said Treherne, with a clang of finality in his tones,
like the slamming of a door.

"Well, suppose he has?" cried the lawyer, roused at the voice.
"The Squire can go into his own wood, I suppose!
What the devil's all the fuss about, Mr. Paynter? Don't tell
me you think there's any harm in that plantation of sticks."

"No, I don't," said Paynter, throwing one leg over another and lighting
a cigar. "But I shall stop here till he comes out."

"Very well," said Ashe shortly, "I'll stop with you, if only to see
the end of this farce."

The doctor said nothing, but he also kept his seat and accepted
one of the American's cigars. If Treherne had been attending
to the matter he might have noted, with his sardonic superstition,
a curious fact--that, while all three men were tacitly condemning
themselves to stay out all night if necessary, all, by one blank
omission or oblivion, assumed that it was impossible to follow
their host into the wood just in front of them. But Treherne,
though still in the garden, had wandered away from the garden table,
and was pacing along the single line of trees against the dark sea.
They had in their regular interstices, showing the sea as through a series
of windows, something of the look of the ghost or skeleton of a cloister,
and he, having thrown his coat once more over his neck, like a cape,
passed to and fro like the ghost of some not very sane monk.