“I don’t see that it could be called much else but murder,” was Mr. Jones’s answer.  “He went out with my lord’s gamekeepers one night and got shot in a poaching fray.  ’Twas never known for certain who fired the shot, but I think I could put my finger on the man if I tried.  Much good that would do, though!  There’s no proof.”

“What are you saying, Jones?” cried the station-master, staring at his subordinate, and perhaps wondering whether he had already that morning paid a visit to the tap of the Elster Arms.

“I’m saying nothing that half the place didn’t say at the time, Mr. Markham. You hadn’t come here then, Mr. Elster—­he was the Honourable George—­went out one night with the keepers when warm work was expected, and got shot for his pains.  He lived some weeks, but they couldn’t cure him.  It was in the late lord’s time. He died soon after, and the place has been deserted ever since.”

“And who do you suppose fired the shot?”

“Don’t know that it ’ud be safe to say,” rejoined the man.  “He might give my neck a twist some dark night if he heard on’t.  He’s the blackest sheep we’ve got in Calne, sir.”

“I suppose you mean Pike,” said the station-master.  “He has the character for being that, I believe.  I’ve seen no harm in the man myself.”

“Well, it was Pike,” said the porter.  “That is, some of us suspected him.  And that’s how Mr. George Elster came by his death.  And this one, Mr. Percival, shot up into notice, as being the only one left, except Lord Elster.”

“And who’s Lord Elster?” asked the station-master, not remembering to have heard the title before.

Mr. Jones received the question with proper contempt.  Having been familiar with Hartledon and its inmates all his life, he had as little compassion for those who were not so, as he would have had for a man who did not understand that Garchester was in England.

“The present Earl of Hartledon,” said he, shortly.  “In his father’s lifetime—­and the old lord lived to see Mr. George buried—­he was Lord Elster.  Not one of my tribe of brats but could tell that any Lord Elster must be the eldest son of the Earl of Hartledon,” he concluded with a fling at his superior.

“Ah, well, I have had other things to do since I came here besides inquiring into titles and folks that don’t concern me,” remarked the station-master.  “What a good-looking man he is!”

The praise applied to Mr. Elster, after whom he was throwing a parting look.  Jones gave an ungracious assent, and turned into the shed where the lamps were kept, to begin his morning’s work.

All the world would have been ready to echo the station-master’s words as to the good looks of Percival Elster, known universally amidst his friends as Val Elster; for these good looks did not lie so much in actual beauty—­which one lauds, and another denies, according to its style—­as in the singularly pleasant expression of countenance; a gift that finds its weight with all.