But he turned laughing to her.

“Nay,” he said, “I must be getting home.”

He turned and went straight out of the house.  Watching him, the landlady’s face became yellow with passion and rage.

“That little poisonous Indian viper,” she said aloud, attributing Aaron’s mood to the doctor.  Her husband was noisily bolting the door.

Outside it was dark and frosty.  A gang of men lingered in the road near the closed door.  Aaron found himself among them, his heart bitterer than steel.

The men were dispersing.  He should take the road home.  But the devil was in it, if he could take a stride in the homeward direction.  There seemed a wall in front of him.  He veered.  But neither could he take a stride in the opposite direction.  So he was destined to veer round, like some sort of weather-cock, there in the middle of the dark road outside the “Royal Oak.”

But as he turned, he caught sight of a third exit.  Almost opposite was the mouth of Shottle Lane, which led off under trees, at right angles to the highroad, up to New Brunswick Colliery.  He veered towards the off-chance of this opening, in a delirium of icy fury, and plunged away into the dark lane, walking slowly, on firm legs.

CHAPTER III

“The lighted tree”

It is remarkable how many odd or extraordinary people there are in England.  We hear continual complaints of the stodgy dullness of the English.  It would be quite as just to complain of their freakish, unusual characters.  Only en masse the metal is all Britannia.

In an ugly little mining town we find the odd ones just as distinct as anywhere else.  Only it happens that dull people invariably meet dull people, and odd individuals always come across odd individuals, no matter where they may be.  So that to each kind society seems all of a piece.

At one end of the dark tree-covered Shottle Lane stood the “Royal Oak” public house; and Mrs. Houseley was certainly an odd woman.  At the other end of the lane was Shottle House, where the Bricknells lived; the Bricknells were odd, also.  Alfred Bricknell, the old man, was one of the partners in the Colliery firm.  His English was incorrect, his accent, broad Derbyshire, and he was not a gentleman in the snobbish sense of the word.  Yet he was well-to-do, and very stuck-up.  His wife was dead.

Shottle House stood two hundred yards beyond New Brunswick Colliery.  The colliery was imbedded in a plantation, whence its burning pit-hill glowed, fumed, and stank sulphur in the nostrils of the Bricknells.  Even war-time efforts had not put out this refuse fire.  Apart from this, Shottle House was a pleasant square house, rather old, with shrubberies and lawns.  It ended the lane in a dead end.  Only a field-path trekked away to the left.

On this particular Christmas Eve Alfred Bricknell had only two of his children at home.  Of the others, one daughter was unhappily married, and away in India weeping herself thinner; another was nursing her babies in Streatham.  Jim, the hope of the house, and Julia, now married to Robert Cunningham, had come home for Christmas.