Lord Plowden paused for a moment under the candle-light to
look at his watch. "We did it in a bit over eight minutes,"
he remarked, with obvious satisfaction. "With four
people and heavy roads that's not so bad--not so bad.
But come inside."

They moved forward through the wide doorway into an
apartment the like of which Thorpe had not seen before.
It was a large, square room, with a big staircase at
the end, which separated and went off to right and left,
half-way up its visible course. Its floor was of
inlaid woods, old and uneven from long use, and carpeted
here and there by the skins of tigers and leopards.
There were many other suggestions of the chase about
the room: riding boots, whips, spurs, and some stands
of archaic weapons caught the eye at various points;
the heads of foxes and deer peeped out on the blackened
panels of the walls, from among clusters of hooks crowded
with coats, hats, and mackintoshes. At the right,
where a fire glowed and blazed under a huge open
chimney-place, there were low chairs and divans drawn up
to mark off a space for orderly domestic occupation.
The irregularity of every thing outside--the great table
in the centre of the hall strewn with an incongruous litter
of caps, books, flasks, newspapers, gloves, tobacco-pouches;
the shoes, slippers, and leggings scattered under the
benches at the sides--all this self-renewing disorder of a
careless household struck Thorpe with a profound surprise.
It was like nothing so much as a Mexican ranch--and
to find it in the ancestral home of an English nobleman,