“Well, really,” said the Colonel, “you are very kind; but I don’t think that my dress clothes are unpacked yet.”

“Dress clothes!  Oh, never mind your dress clothes.  Ida will excuse you, I daresay.  Besides, you have no time to dress.  By Jove, it’s nearly seven o’clock; we must be off if you are coming.”

The Colonel hesitated.  He had intended to dine at home, and being a methodical-minded man did not like altering his plans.  Also, he was, like most military men, very punctilious about his dress and personal appearance, and objected to going out to dinner in a shooting coat.  But all this notwithstanding, a feeling that he did not quite understand, and which it would have puzzled even an American novelist to analyse—­something between restlessness and curiosity, with a dash of magnetic attraction thrown in—­got the better of his scruples, and he accepted.

“Well, thank you,” he said, “if you are sure that Miss de la Molle will not mind, I will come.  Just allow me to tell Mrs. Jobson.”

“That’s right,” halloaed the Squire after him, “I’ll meet you at the back of the house.  We had better go through the fields.”

By the time that the Colonel, having informed his housekeeper that he should not want any dinner, and hastily brushed his not too luxuriant locks, had reached the garden which lay behind the house, the Squire was nowhere to be seen.  Presently, however, a loud halloa from the top of the tumulus-like hill announced his whereabouts.

Wondering what the old gentleman could be doing there, Harold Quaritch walked up the steps that led to the summit of the mound, and found him standing at the entrance to the mushroom-shaped summer-house, contemplating the view.

“There, Colonel,” he said, “there’s a perfect view for you.  Talk about Scotland and the Alps!  Give me a view of the valley of Ell from the top of Dead Man’s Mount on an autumn evening, and I never want to see anything finer.  I have always loved it from a boy, and always shall so long as I live—­look at those oaks, too.  There are no such trees in the county that I know of.  The old lady, your aunt, was wonderfully fond of them.  I hope—­” he went on in a tone of anxiety—­“I hope that you don’t mean to cut any of them down.”

“Oh no,” said the Colonel, “I should never think of such a thing.”

“That’s right.  Never cut down a good tree if you can help it.  I’m sorry to say, however,” he added after a pause, “that I have been forced to cut down a good many myself.  Queer place this, isn’t it?” he continued, dropping the subject of the trees, which was evidently a painful one to him.  “Dead Man’s Mount is what the people about here call it, and that is what they called it at the time of the Conquest, as I can prove to you from ancient writings.  I always believed that it was a tumulus, but of late years a lot of these clever people have been taking their oath that it is an ancient British dwelling,