And then came Tom Bond upon the scene of action and the fearful affair of the woodstack began to take shape.  We wanted a new first footman, and he offered, and his credentials looked so right that Sir Walter, in his careless way, didn’t bother about ’em, seeing by his photograph that Tom was a good-looking man and hearing he stood six feet two inches.  And certainly, after his arrival, nobody thought no more of his character, for a cleverer and more capable chap you couldn’t wish to meet.  He knew his job from A to Z, and I will say here and now that, merely regarded as a first footman, Tom was never beat in my experience.  He had an art to understand and anticipate my wishes and a skill to fall into my ways that gave me very great satisfaction, and he pleased the gentlemen also and shone in the servants’ hall.  In fact I seldom liked a young man better, and what followed within six months of his arrival came as a fearful shock upon me, because by that time I’d grown to feel uncommon friendly to the wretch.

He was amazing good-looking, with curly hair and blue eyes and very fine teeth.  And he was one of those men that win the women by their nice manners and careful choice of words.  You never heard him speak anything unbecoming, and he was just as civil to the humblest as he was to the housekeeper herself.  A care-free man seemingly, with his life before him and such gifts that he might be expected to make a pretty good thing of it.  An orphan, too, or so he said.

Thirty-two he claimed to be, but I judged him to be a bit more in reality.

Then came the fatal cloud.  Knowing that I was engaged to Jenny, he took good care to keep the right side of her on my account, but all too soon there dawned the making of the future tragedy and he was pleasuring her for her own sake.  He hid his games from me, of course, and it was an easy thing to do, because I stood above any suspicion with regard to Jenny; but a time came when he didn’t hide his games from her, and it was only when I began to see queer signs about her I couldn’t read that any uneasiness overgot me.  I do think most honest that she didn’t know what was happening to her for a long time, because she loved me, or thought she did; but little by little her old gladsome way along with me wilted and I found her wits wandering.  She’d be dreaming instead of listening to my discourse, and then she’d come back to herself and squeeze hold of my hand, or kiss me, and ask me to say what I’d just said over again.  I passed it off a lot of times, and then on the quiet had a tell with her father, thinking, maybe, if there was anything biting her, he might know it.

But he said little.  He only scowled and glowered and wriggled his eyebrows like a monkey—­a nasty trick he had.

“If there’s trouble on her mind,” said Joshua, “you may lay your life it’s the thought of deserting a lonely father.  And if conscience works in her, as I hope to God it will, then you’ll find yourself down and out yet, William Morris.”