The squire directed Uberly, acting as his groom, to walk his horse up and down the turf fronting young Tom Eckerthy’s cottage, and me to remain where I was; then hobbled up to the door, followed at a leisurely march by my father.  The door opened.  My father swept the old man in before him, with a bow and flourish that admitted of no contradiction, and the door closed on them.  I caught a glimpse of Uberly screwing his wrinkles in a queer grimace, while he worked his left eye and thumb expressively at the cottage, by way of communicating his mind to Samuel, Captain Bulsted’s coachman; and I became quite of his opinion as to the nature of the meeting, that it was comical and not likely to lead to much.  I thought of the princess and of my hope of her depending upon such an interview as this.  From that hour when I stepped on the sands of the Continent to the day of my quitting them, I had been folded in a dream:  I had stretched my hands to the highest things of earth, and here now was the retributive material money-question, like a keen scythe-blade!

The cottage-door continued shut.  The heaths were darkening.  I heard a noise of wheels, and presently the unmistakable voice of Janet saying, ‘That must be Harry.’  She was driving my aunt Dorothy.  Both of them hushed at hearing that the momentous duel was in progress.  Janet’s first thought was of the squire.  ‘I won’t have him ride home in the dark,’ she said, and ordered Uberly to walk the horse home.  The ladies had a ladies’ altercation before Janet would permit my aunt to yield her place and proceed on foot, accompanied by me.  Naturally the best driver of the two kept the whip.  I told Samuel to go on to Bulsted, with word that we were coming:  and Janet, nodding bluntly, agreed to direct my father as to where he might expect to find me on the Riversley road.  My aunt Dorothy and I went ahead slowly:  at her request I struck a pathway to avoid the pony-carriage, which was soon audible; and when Janet, chattering to the squire, had gone by, we turned back to intercept my father.  He was speechless at the sight of Dorothy Beltham.  At his solicitation, she consented to meet him next day; his account of the result of the interview was unintelligible to her as well as to me.  Even after leaving her at the park-gates, I could get nothing definite from him, save that all was well, and that the squire was eminently practical; but he believed he had done an excellent evening’s work.  ‘Yes,’ said he, rubbing his hands, ’excellent! making due allowances for the emphatically commoner’s mind we have to deal with.’  And then to change the subject he dilated on that strange story of the man who, an enormous number of years back in the date of the world’s history, carried his little son on his shoulders one night when the winds were not so boisterous, though we were deeper in Winter, along the identical road we traversed, between the gorsemounds, across the heaths, with yonder remembered fir-tree clump in sight and the waste-water visible to footfarers rounding under the firs.  At night-time he vowed, that as far as nature permitted it, he had satisfied the squire—­’completely satisfied him, I mean,’ he said, to give me sound sleep.  ’No doubt of it; no doubt of it, Richie.’