British dwellingite, proceeded to show with much triumph how they had lived in the hole by building a huge mushroom-shaped roof over it, and thereby turning it into a summer-house, which, owing to unexpected difficulties in the construction of the roof, cost a great deal of money.  But as the roof was slated, and as it was found necessary to pave the hollow with tiles and cut surface drains in it, the result did not clearly prove its use as a dwelling place before the Roman conquest.  Nor did it make a very good summer house.  Indeed it now served as a store place for the gardener’s tools and for rubbish generally.

CHAPTER II

The colonel meets the squire

As Colonel Quaritch was contemplating these various views and reflecting that on the whole he had done well to come and live at Honham Cottage, he was suddenly startled by a loud voice saluting him from about twenty yards distance with such peculiar vigour that he fairly jumped.

“Colonel Quaritch, I believe,” said, or rather shouted, the voice from somewhere down the drive.

“Yes,” answered the Colonel mildly, “here I am.”

“Ah, I thought it was you.  Always tell a military man, you know.  Excuse me, but I am resting for a minute, this last pull is an uncommonly stiff one.  I always used to tell my dear old friend, Mrs. Massey, that she ought to have the hill cut away a bit just here.  Well, here goes for it,” and after a few heavy steps his visitor emerged from the shadow of the trees into the sunset light which was playing on the terrace before the house.

Colonel Quaritch glanced up curiously to see who the owner of the great voice might be, and his eyes lit upon as fine a specimen of humanity as he had seen for a long while.  The man was old, as his white hair showed, seventy perhaps, but that was the only sign of decay about him.  He was a splendid man, broad and thick and strong, with a keen, quick eye, and a face sharply chiselled, and clean shaved, of the stamp which in novels is generally known as aristocratic, a face, in fact, that showed both birth and breeding.  Indeed, as clothed in loose tweed garments and a gigantic pair of top boots, his visitor stood leaning on his long stick and resting himself after facing the hill, Harold Quaritch thought that he had never seen a more perfect specimen of the typical English country gentleman—­as the English country gentleman used to be.

“How do you do, sir, how do you do—­my name is de la Molle.  My man George, who knows everybody’s business except his own, told me that you had arrived here, so I thought I would walk round and do myself the honour of making your acquaintance.”

“That is very kind of you,” said the Colonel.

“Not at all.  If you only knew how uncommonly dull it is down in these parts you would not say that.  The place isn’t what it used to be when I was a boy.  There are plenty of rich people about, but they are not the same stamp of people.  It isn’t what it used to be in more ways than one,” and the old Squire gave something like a sigh, and thoughtfully removed his white hat, out of which a dinner napkin and two pocket-handkerchiefs fell to the ground, in a fashion that reminded Colonel Quaritch of the climax of a conjuring trick.