Mr. Rogers shuddered.

“And the last time I saw the inside of it ’twas at Lydia’s Cricket-Week Ball—­and the place all flags and lanterns, and a good third of the men drunk!  Well, carry him there if you must, but damme if I’ll ever find stomach to dance there again!”

The men lifted their burden and carried it out into the lane, where the rest of us pulled away the furze-bushes stopping he gate into the park, and so followed the body up the green slope towards the rise, over which, as we climbed, the thatched roof of the pavilion slowly hove into sight.

“Hallo!” Mr. Rogers halted and stared at the bearers, who also had halted.  “What the devil noise is that?”

The noise was that of a sudden blow or impact upon timber.  After about thirty seconds it was repeated, and our senses told us that it came from within the pavilion.

“I reckon, sir,” suggested one of the woodmen, “’tis Miss Belcher practising.”

“Good Lord!  Come with us, Harry—­the rest stay where you are,” Mr. Rogers commanded, and ran towards the pavilion; and as we started I heard a whizzing and cracking within, as of machinery, followed by a double crack of timber.

“Lydia!  Lydia Belcher!”

“Hey!  What’s the matter now?” I heard Miss Belcher’s voice demand, as he burst in through the doorway.  “Take care, the catapult’s loaded!” A whiz, and again a crack.  “There now!  Oh, well fielded, indeed!  Well fiel—­Eh?  Caught you on the ankle, did it?  Well, and you’re lucky it didn’t find your skull, blundering in upon a body in this fashion.”

The first sight that met me as I reached the doorway was Mr. Jack Rogers holding one foot and hopping around with a face of agony.  From him my astonished gaze travelled to Miss Lydia Belcher, whom I must pause to describe.

I have hinted before that Miss Belcher was an eccentric; but I certainly cannot have prepared the reader—­as I was certainly unprepared myself—­for Miss Belcher as we surprised her.

She wore top-boots, but this is a trifle, for she habitually wore top-boots.  Upon them, and beneath the short skirt of a red flannel petticoat, she had indued a pair of cricket-guards.  Above the red flannel petticoat came, frank and unashamed, an ample pair of stays; above them, the front of a yet ampler chemise and a yellow bandanna kerchief tied in a sailor’s knot; above these, a middle-aged face full of character and not without a touch of moustache on the upper lip; an aquiline nose, grey eyes that apologized to nobody, a broad brow to balance a broad, square jaw, and, on the top of all, a square-topped beaver hat.  So stood Miss Belcher, with a cricket-bat under her arm; an Englishwoman, owner of one of England’s “stately homes”; a lady amenable to few laws save of her own making, and to no man save—­remotely—­the King, whose health she drank sometimes in port and sometimes in gin-and-water.

“Good morning, Jack!  Sorry to cut you over with that off-drive; but you shouldn’t have come in without knocking.  Eh?  Is that Harry Brooks?” Her face grew grave for a moment before she turned upon Mr. Rogers that smile which, if usually latent and at the best not entirely feminine, was her least dubitable charm.  “Now, upon my word.  Jack, you have more thoughtfulness than ever I gave you credit for.”