“There’s one of the gentlemen here,” Middleton announced, addressing them, “who wants to know if you’d go through the Black Wood of Dominey for a sovereign apiece?—­Watch their faces, your Grace.—­Now then, lads?”

There was no possibility of any mistake.  The very suggestion seemed to have taken the healthy sunburn from their cheeks.  They fumbled with their sticks uneasily.  One of them touched his hat and spoke to Dominey.

“I’m one as ’as seen it, sir, as well as heard,” he said.  “I’d sooner give up my farm than go nigh the place.”

Caroline suddenly passed her arm through Dominey’s.  There was a note of distress in her tone.

“Henry, you’re an idiot!” she exclaimed.  “It was my fault, Everard.  I’m so sorry.  Just for one moment I had forgotten.  I ought to have stopped Henry at once.  The poor man has no memory.”

Dominey’s arm responded for a moment to the pressure of her fingers.  Then he turned to the beaters.

“Well, no one is going to ask you to go to the Black Wood,” he promised.  “Get round to the back of Hunt’s stubbles, and bring them into the roots and then over into the park.  We will line the park fence.  How is that, Middleton?”

The keeper touched his hat and stepped briskly off.

“I’ll just have a walk with them myself, sir,” he said.  “Them birds do break at Fuller’s corner.  I’ll see if I can flank them.  You’ll know where to put the guns, Squire.”

Dominey nodded.  One and all the beaters were walking with most unaccustomed speed towards their destination.  Their backs were towards the Black Wood.  Terniloff came up to his host.

“Have I, by chance, been terribly tactless?” he asked.

Dominey shook his head.

“You asked a perfectly natural question, Prince,” he replied.  “There is no reason why you should not know the truth.  Near that wood occurred the tragedy which drove me from England for so many years.”

“I am deeply grieved,” the Prince began—­

“It is false sentiment to avoid allusions to it,” Dominey interrupted.  “I was attacked there one night by a man who had some cause for offence against me.  We fought, and I reached home in a somewhat alarming state.  My condition terrified my wife so much that she has been an invalid ever since.  But here is the point which has given birth to all these superstitions, and which made me for many years a suspected person.  The man with whom I fought has never been seen since.”

Terniloff was at once too fascinated by the story and puzzled by his host’s manner of telling it to maintain his apologetic attitude.

“Never seen since!” he repeated.

“My own memory as to the end of our fight is uncertain,” Dominey continued.  “My impression is that I left my assailant unconscious upon the ground.”

“Then it is his ghost, I imagine, who haunts the Black Wood?”

Dominey shook himself as one who would get rid of an unwholesome thought.