Summer was just over when Christopher Julian found himself rattling along in the train to Sandbourne on some trifling business appertaining to his late father's affairs, which would afford him an excuse for calling at Arrowthorne about the song of hers that he wished to produce. He alighted in the afternoon at a little station some twenty miles short of Sandbourne, and leaving his portmanteau behind him there, decided to walk across the fields, obtain if possible the interview with the lady, and return then to the station to finish the journey to Sandbourne, which he could thus reach at a convenient hour in the evening, and, if he chose, take leave of again the next day.
It was an afternoon which had a fungous smell out of doors, all being sunless and stagnant overhead and around. The various species of trees had begun to assume the more distinctive colours of their decline, and where there had been one pervasive green were now twenty greenish yellows, the air in the vistas between them being half opaque with blue exhalation. Christopher in his walk overtook a countryman, and inquired if the path they were following would lead him to Arrowthorne Lodge.
''Twill take 'ee into Arr'thorne Park,' the man replied. 'But you won't come anigh the Lodge, unless you bear round to the left as might be.'
'Mrs. Petherwin lives there, I believe?'
'No, sir. Leastwise unless she's but lately come. I have never heard of such a woman.'
'She may possibly be only visiting there.'
'Ah, perhaps that's the shape o't. Well, now you tell o't, I have seen a strange face thereabouts once or twice lately. A young good-looking maid enough, seemingly.'
'Yes, she's considered a very handsome lady.'
'I've heard the woodmen say, now that you tell o't, that they meet her every now and then, just at the closing in of the day, as they come home along with their nitches of sticks; ay, stalking about under the trees by herself--a tall black martel, so long-legged and awful-like that you'd think 'twas the old feller himself a-coming, they say. Now a woman must be a queer body to my thinking, to roam about by night so lonesome and that? Ay, now that you tell o't, there is such a woman, but 'a never have showed in the parish; sure I never thought who the body was--no, not once about her, nor where 'a was living and that--not I, till you spoke. Well, there, sir, that's Arr'thorne Lodge; do you see they three elms?' He pointed across the glade towards some confused foliage a long way off.
'I am not sure about the sort of tree you mean,' said Christopher, 'I see a number of trees with edges shaped like edges of clouds.'
'Ay, ay, they be oaks; I mean the elms to the left hand.'
'But a man can hardly tell oaks from elms at that distance, my good fellow!'
'That 'a can very well--leastwise, if he's got the sense.'
'Well, I think I see what you mean,' said Christopher 'What next?'
'When you get there, you bear away smart to nor'-west, and you'll come straight as a line to the Lodge.'
'How the deuce am I to know which is north-west in a strange place, with no sun to tell me?'
