The first thought that came to him was practical, even prosaic—­ the thought that he couldn’t possibly do this five-miles-there and-five-miles-back walk, every time he wanted to see the place.  He must shift his base nearer the scene of operations.  One of those trim, thatched cottages down there in the valley would be just the thing, if he could arrange to take possession of it.  They sat there all round the castle, singly and in groups, like small dogs round their master.  They looked as if they had been there for centuries.  Probably they had, as they were made of stone as solid as that of the castle.  There must have been a time, thought George, when the castle was the central rallying-point for all those scattered homes; when rumour of danger from marauders had sent all that little community scuttling for safety to the sheltering walls.

For the first time since he had set out on his expedition, a certain chill, a discomforting sinking of the heart, afflicted George as he gazed down at the grim grey fortress which he had undertaken to storm.  So must have felt those marauders of old when they climbed to the top of this very hill to spy out the land.  And George’s case was even worse than theirs.  They could at least hope that a strong arm and a stout heart would carry them past those solid walls; they had not to think of social etiquette.  Whereas George was so situated that an unsympathetic butler could put him to rout by refusing him admittance.

The evening was drawing in.  Already, in the brief time he had spent on the hill-top, the sky had turned from blue to saffron and from saffron to grey.  The plaintive voices of homing cows floated up to him from the valley below.  A bat had left its shelter and was wheeling around him, a sinister blot against the sky.  A sickle moon gleamed over the trees.  George felt cold.  He turned.  The shadows of night wrapped him round, and little things in the hedgerows chirped and chittered mockery at him as he stumbled down the lane.

George’s request for a lonely furnished cottage somewhere in the neighbourhood of the castle did not, as he had feared, strike the Belpher house-agent as the demand of a lunatic.  Every well-dressed stranger who comes to Belpher is automatically set down by the natives as an artist, for the picturesqueness of the place has caused it to be much infested by the brothers and sisters of the brush.  In asking for a cottage, indeed, George did precisely as Belpher society expected him to do; and the agent was reaching for his list almost before the words were out of his mouth.  In less than half an hour George was out in the street again, the owner for the season of what the agent described as a “gem” and the employer of a farmer’s wife who lived near-by and would, as was her custom with artists, come in the morning and evening to “do” for him.  The interview would have taken but a few minutes, had it not been prolonged by the chattiness of the agent