He wore now, as he came into the living-room, an excited, quasi-triumphant look, which did not escape his father.

“What you been after, Will?”

“Helpin’ Wilson.”

Wilson was a neighbouring keeper, who in June and July, before the young pheasants were returned to the woods, occasionally employed Will Brand as a watcher, especially at night.

Brand made no reply.  His wife brought in the tea, and he and Will helped themselves greedily.  Presently Will said abruptly: 

“A’ve made that owd gun work all right.”

“Aye?” Brand’s tone was interrogative, but listless.

“I shot a kestrel an’ a stoat wi’ un this morning.”

“Yo’did, eh?”

Will nodded, his mouth crammed with bread and butter, strange lights and flickering expressions playing over his starved, bony face.

“Wilson says I’m gettin’ a varra fair shot.”

“Aye?  I’ve heard tha’ practisin’.”  Brand turned a pair of dull eyes upon his son.

“An’ I wish tha’ wudn’t do’t i’ my garden!” said Mrs. Brand, with energy.  “I doan’t howd wi’ guns an’ shootin’ aboot, in a sma’ garden, wi’ t’ washin’ an’ aw.”

“It’s feyther’s garden, ain’t it, as long as he pays t’ rent!” said Will, bringing his hand down on the table with sudden passion.  “Wha’s to hinder me?  Mebbe yo’ think Melrose ’ull be aboot.”

“Howd your tongue, Willie,” said his mother, mildly.  “We werena taakin’ o’ Melrose.”

“Noa—­because we’re aye thinkin’!”

The lad’s eyes blazed as he roughly pushed his cup for a fresh supply.  His mother endeavoured to soothe him by changing the subject.  But neither husband nor son encouraged her.  A gloomy silence fell over the tea-table.  Presently Brand moved, and with halting step went to the little horsehair sofa, and stretched himself full length upon it.  Such an action on his part was unheard of.  Both wife and son stared at him without speaking.  Then Mrs. Brand got up, fetched an old shawl, and put it over her husband who had closed his eyes.  Will left the room, and sitting on a stool outside the cottage door, with the old gun between his knees, he watched the sunset as it flushed the west, and ran along the fell-tops, till little by little the summer night rose from the purple valley, or fell softly from the emerging stars, and day was done.

* * * * *

A fortnight later, Mr. Louis Delorme, the famous portrait painter, arrived at Duddon Castle.  Various guests had been invited to meet him.  Two guests—­members of the Tatham family—­had invited themselves, much to Lady Tatham’s annoyance.  And certain neighbours were coming to dine; among them Mrs. Penfold and her daughters.

Dinner was laid in a white-pillared loggia, built by an “Italianate” Lord Tatham in the eighteenth century on the western side of the house, communicating with the dining-room behind it, and with the Italian garden in front.  It commanded the distant blue line of the Keswick and Ullswater mountains, and a foreground of wood and crag, while the Italian garden to which the marble steps of the loggia descended, with its formal patterns of bright colour, blue, purple, and crimson, lay burning in the afterglow of sunset light, which, in a northern July, will let you read till ten o’clock.