Alan laughed outright as he finished this peculiar and outspoken epistle, which somehow revived his spirits, that since the previous day had been low enough.  It refreshed him.  It was like a breath of frosty air from an open window blowing clean and cold into a scented, overheated room.  He would have liked to keep it, but remembering Barbara’s injunctions and the under-footman, threw it onto the fire and watched it burn.  Jeekie coughed to intimate that it was time for his master to dress, and Alan turned and looked at him in an absent-minded fashion.

He was worth looking at, was Jeekie.  Let the reader imagine a very tall and powerfully-built negro with a skin as black as a well-polished boot, woolly hair as white as snow, a little tufted beard also white, a hand like a leg of mutton, but with long delicate fingers and pink, filbert-shaped nails, an immovable countenance, but set in it beneath a massive brow, two extraordinary humorous and eloquent black eyes which expressed every emotion passing through the brain behind them, that is when their owner chose to allow them to do so.  Such was Jeekie.

“Shall I unlace your boots, Major?” he said in his full, melodious voice and speaking the most perfect English.  “I expect that the gong will sound in nine and a half minutes.”

“Then let it sound and be hanged to it,” answered Alan; “no, I forgot—­I must hurry.  Jeekie, put that fire out and open all the windows as soon as I go down.  This room is like a hot-house.”

“Yes, Major, the fire shall be extinguished and the sleeping-chamber ventilated.  The other boot, if you please, Major.”

“Jeekie,” said Alan, “who is stopping in this place?  Have you heard?”

“I collected some names on my way upstairs, Major.  Three of the gentlemen you have never met before, but,” he added suddenly breaking away from his high-flown book-learned English, as was his custom when in earnest, “Jeekie think they just black niggers like the rest, thief people.  There ain’t a white man in this house, except you and Miss Barbara and me, Major.  Jeekie learnt all that in servant’s hall palaver.  No, not now, other time.  Everyone tell everything to Jeekie, poor old African fool, and he look up an answer, ‘O law! you don’t say so?’ but keep his eyes and ears open all the same.”

“I’ll be bound you do, Jeekie,” replied Alan, laughing again.  “Well, go on keeping them open, and give me those trousers.”

“Yes, Major,” answered Jeekie, reassuming his grand manner, “I shall continue to collect information which may prove to your advantage, but personally I wish that you were clear of the whole caboodle, except Miss Barbara.”

“Hear, hear,” ejaculated Alan, “there goes the gong.  Mind you come in and help to wait,” and hurrying into his coat he departed downstairs.