It happened that the squire came across us as we were rounding the slope of larch and fir plantation near a part of the Riversley hollows, leading to the upper heath-land, where, behind a semicircle of birches, Bulsted lay.  He was on horseback, and called hoarsely to the captain’s coachman, who was driving us, to pull up.  ‘Here, Harry,’ he sang out to me, in the same rough voice, ’I don’t see why we should bother Captain William.  It’s a bit of business, not pleasure.  I’ve got the book in my pocket.  You ask—­is it convenient to step into my bailiff’s cottage hard by, and run through it?  Ten minutes ’ll tell me all I want to know.  I want it done with.  Ask.’

My father stood up and bowed, bareheaded.

My grandfather struck his hat and bobbed.

‘Mr. Beltham, I trust I see you well.’

‘Better, sir, when I’ve got rid of a damned unpleasant bit o’ business.’

‘I offer you my hearty assistance.’

‘Do you?  Then step down and come into my bailiff’s.’

‘I come, sir.’

My father alighted from the carriage.  The squire cast his gouty leg to be quit of his horse, but not in time to check my father’s advances and ejaculations of condolence.

’Gout, Mr. Beltham, is a little too much a proof to us of a long line of ancestry.’

His hand and arm were raised in the form of a splint to support the squire, who glared back over his cheekbone, horrified that he could not escape the contact, and in too great pain from arthritic throes to protest:  he resembled a burglar surprised by justice.  ’What infernal nonsense . . , fellow talking now?’ I heard him mutter between his hoppings and dancings, with one foot in the stirrup and a toe to earth, the enemy at his heel, and his inclination half bent upon swinging to the saddle again.

I went to relieve him.  ‘Damn! . . .  Oh, it’s you,’ said he.

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!