pile of buildings, standing round three sides of a yard. They had once
been the stables of the Hall. Now they were put to farm uses, and through
the door of what had formerly been a coachhouse with a coat of arms
worked in white pebbles on its floor, a woman could be seen milking.
Helbeck looked in upon her.

"No carriage gone by yet, Mrs. Tyson?"

"Noa, sir," said the woman. "But I'll mebbe prop t' gate open, for it's
aboot time." And she put down her pail.

"Don't move!" said Helbeck hastily. "I'll do it myself."

The woman, as she milked, watched him propping the ruinous gate with a
stone; her expression all the time friendly and attentive. His own
people, women especially, somehow always gave him this attention.

Helbeck hurried forward over a road, once stately, and now badly worn and
ill-mended. The trees, mostly oaks of long growth, which had accompanied
him since the entrance of the park, thickened to a close wood around till
of a sudden he emerged from them, and there, across a wide space, rose a
grey gabled house, sharp against a hillside, with a rainy evening light
full upon it.

It was an old and weather-beaten house, of a singular character and
dignity; yet not large. It was built of grey stone, covered with a
rough-cast, so tempered by age to the colour and surface of the stone,
that the many patches where it had dropped away produced hardly any
disfiguring effect. The rugged "pele" tower, origin and source of all the
rest, was now grouped with the gables and projections, the broad