“Why can’t you speak, man?” he said irritably.  “Tell me where he is!”

“He has gone for his ride as usual,” Victor said, speaking through pursed lips.  “But he is very, very feeble to-day, Monsieur Pierre.  We beg him not to go.  But what would you?  He is the master.  We could not stop him.  But he sit in his saddle—­like this.”

Victor’s gesture descriptive of the bent, stricken figure that had ridden forth that morning was painfully true to life.

Piers sprang to his feet.  “And he isn’t back yet?  Where on earth can he be?  Which way did he go?”

Victor raised his shoulders.  “He go down the drive—­as always. Apres cela, je ne sais pas.”

“Confusion!” ejaculated Piers, and was gone.

He had returned by a short cut across the park, but now he tore down the long avenue, running like a trained athlete, head up and elbows in, possessed by the single purpose of reaching the lodge in as brief a time as possible.  They would know at the lodge which way his grandfather had gone.

He found Marshall just turning in at his gate for the midday meal, and hailed him without ceremony.

The old man stopped and surveyed him with sour disapproval.  The news of Piers’ abrupt disappearance on the previous night had spread.

No, Marshall could give him no news as to the master’s whereabouts; he had been out all the morning.

“Well, find Mrs. Marshall!” ordered Piers impatiently.  “She’ll know something.  She must have opened the gate.”

Mrs. Marshall, summoned by a surly yell from her husband, stood in the door-way, thin-lipped and austere, and announced briefly that Sir Beverley had gone down towards the Vicarage; she didn’t know no more than that.

It was enough for Piers.  He was gone again like a bird on the wing.  The couple at the lodge looked after him with a species of unwilling admiration.  His very arrogance fed their pride in him, disapprove though they might of his wild, foreign ways.  Whatever the mixture in his veins, the old master’s blood ran there, and they would always be loyal to that.

That run to the Vicarage taxed even Piers’ powers.  The steep hill at the end made him aware that his strength had its limits, and he was forced to pause for breath when he reached the top.  He leaned against the Vicarage gate-post with the memory of that winter evening in his mind when Avery had come swift-footed to the rescue, and had cooled his fury with a bucket of cold water.

A step in the garden made him straighten himself abruptly.  He turned to see a tall, black-coated figure emerge.  The Reverend Stephen Lorimer came up with dignity and greeted him.

“Were you about to enter my humble abode?” he enquired.

“Is my grandfather here?” asked Piers.

Mr. Lorimer smiled benignly.  He liked to imagine himself upon terms of intimacy with Sir Beverley though the latter did very little to justify the idea.