with the young man who had accompanied them from town,
on the back seat of the trap. With these people so close
behind him, Thorpe felt that any intimate conversation
was out of the question. Indeed, talk of any sort
was not invited; the big horse burst forth with high,
sprawling strides upon a career through the twilight,
once the main road was reached, which it taxed all Plowden's
energies to regulate. He kept up a continual murmuring
monologue to the animal--"So--so--quiet, my pet,--so--
so--easy, my beauty---so--so"--and his wrists and gloved
hands were visibly under a tremendous tension of strain,
as they held their own against the rigid arched neck
and mouth of steel. Thorpe kept a grip on the side of
the trap, and had only a modified pleasure in the drive.
The road along which they sped seemed, in the gathering dusk,
uncomfortably narrow, and he speculated a good deal
as to how frightened the two mutes behind him must be.
But silence was such a law of their life that, though he
strained his ears, he could not so much as hear them
sigh or gasp.

It seemed but a very few minutes before they turned off,
with but the most fleeting diminution of pace, upon a
private road, which speedily developed into an avenue
of trees, quite dark and apparently narrower than ever.
Down this they raced precipitately, and then, coming out
all at once upon an open space, swung smartly round the
crescent of a gravel road, and halted before what seemed
to be the door of a greenhouse. Thorpe, as he stood up
in the trap, got an uncertain, general idea of a low,