“All day within the dreamy house The doors upon their hinges creak’d, The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked, Or from the crevice peer’d about, Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called her from without.”— MARIANA.

My eyes had been occupied with the grey chimneys below, among the Spanish chestnuts, at the very moment when I slipped on the northern face of Skirrid and twisted my ankle. This indeed explains the accident; and the accident explains why my interest in the house with the grey chimneys suddenly became a personal one. Five miles separated me from my inn in Aber town. But the white smoke of a goods train went crawling across the green and cultivated plain at my feet; and I knew, though I carried no map, that somewhere under the slope to my left must hide the country station of Llanfihangel. To reach it I must pass the house, and there, no doubt, would happen on someone to set me on the shortest way.

So I picked up my walking-stick and hobbled down the hillside, albeit with pain. Where the descent eased a little I found and followed a foot-track, which in time turned into a sunk road scored deep with old cart-ruts, and so brought me to a desolate farmstead, slowly dropping to ruin there in the perpetual shadow of the mountain. The slates that had fallen from the roof of byre and stable lay buried already under the growth of nettle and mallow and wild parsnip; and the yard-wall was down in a dozen places. I shuffled through one of these gaps, and almost at once found myself face to face with a park-fence of split oak — in yet worse repair, if that were possible. It stretched away right and left with promise of a noble circumference; but no hand had repaired it for at least twenty years. I counted no less than seven breaches through which a man of common size might step without squeezing; availed myself of the nearest; and having with difficulty dragged my disabled foot up the ha-ha slope beyond, took breath at the top and looked about me.

The edge of the ha-ha stood but fifty paces back from an avenue of the most magnificent Spanish chestnuts I have ever seen in my life. A few of them were withering from the top; and under these many dead boughs lay as they had fallen, in grass that obliterated almost all trace of the broad carriage-road. But nine out of ten stood hale and stout, and apparently good for centuries to come. Northward, the grey facade of the house glimmered and closed their green prospective, and towards it I now made my way.

But, I must own, this avenue daunted me, as a frame altogether too lordly for a mere limping pedestrian. And therefore I was relieved, as I drew near, to catch the sound of voices behind the shrubberies on my right hand. This determined me to take the house in flank, and I diverged and pushed my way between the laurels in search of the speakers.

“A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse! Lobelia, how many horses has your father in stable? Red, white, or grey?”

“One, Miss Wilhelmina; an’ that’s old Sentry-go, and father says he’ll have to go to the knacker’s before another winter.”

“Then he shall carry me there on his back: with rings on my fingers and bells on my toes”—

She rode unto the knacker’s yard,

And tirled at the pin:

      Right glad were then the cat’s-meat men

To let that lady in!

— especially, Lobelia, when she alighted and sat upon the ground and began to tell them sad stories of the death of kings. But they cut off Sentry-go’s head and nailed it over the gate. So he died, and she very imprudently married the master knacker, who had heard she was an heiress in her own right, and wanted to decorate his coat-of-arms with an escutcheon of pretence; and besides, his doctor had recommended a complete change “—

“Law, miss, how you do run on!”

The young lady who had given utterance to this amazing rigmarole stood at the top of a terrace flight (much cracked and broken) between two leaden statuettes (headless)— a willowy child in a large-brimmed hat, with a riding-switch in one hand and the other holding up an old tartan shawl, which she had pinned about her to imitate a horse-woman’s habit. As she paced to and fro between the leaden statuettes —

pedes vestis defluxit ad imos

Et vera incessu patuit dea,

— and I noted almost at once that two or three butterflies (“red admirals” they were) floated and circled about her in the sunlight. A child of commoner make, and perhaps a year older, dressed in a buff print frock and pink sunbonnet, looked up at her from the foot of the steps. The faces of both were averted, and I stood there for at least a minute on the verge of the laurels, unobserved, considering the picture they made, and the ruinous Jacobean house that formed its background.

Never was house more eloquent of desolation. Unpainted shutters, cracking in the heat, blocked one half of its windows. Weather-stains ran down the slates from the lantern on the main roof. The lantern over the stable had lost its vane, and the stable-clock its minute-hand. The very nails had dropped out of the gable wall, and the wistaria and Gloire de Dijons they should have supported trailed down in tangles, like curtains. Grass choked the rain-pipes, and moss dappled the gravel walk. In the border at my feet someone had attempted a clearance of the weeds; and here lay his hoe, matted with bindweed and ring-streaked with the silvery tracks of snails.

“Very well, Lobelia. We will be sensible house-maid and cook, and talk of business. We came out, I believe, to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie”—

At this point happening to turn her head she caught sight of me, and stopped with a slight, embarrassed laugh. I raised my hat.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but no strangers are admitted here.”

“I beg your pardon”— I began; and with that, as I shifted my walking-stick, my foolish ankle gave way, and plump I sat in the very middle of the bindweed.

“You are ill?” She came quickly towards me, but halted a pace or two off. “You look as if you were going to faint.”

“I’ll try not to,” said I. “The fact is, I have just twisted my ankle on the side of Skirrid, and I wished to be told the shortest way to the station.”

“I don’t believe you can walk; and”— she hesitated a second, then went on defiantly —“we have no carriage to take you.”

“I should not think of putting you to any such trouble.”

“Also, if you want to reach Aber, there is no train for the next two hours. You must come in and rest.”

“But really “—

“I am mistress here. I am Wilhelmina Van der Knoope.”

Being by this time on my feet again, I bowed and introduced myself by name. She nodded. The child had a thoughtful face — thoughtful beyond her years — and delicately shaped rather than pretty.

“Lobelia, run in and tell the Admirals that a gentleman has called, with my permission.”

Having dismissed the handmaiden, she observed me in silence for a few moments while she unpinned her tartan riding-skirt. Its removal disclosed, not — as I had expected — a short frock, but one of quite womanly length; and she carried it with the air of a grown woman.

“You must make allowances, please. I think,” she mused, “yes, I really think you will be able to help. But you must not be surprised, mind. Can you walk alone, or will you lean a hand on my shoulder?”

I could walk alone. Of what she meant I had of course no inkling; but I saw she was as anxious now for me to come indoors as she had been prompt at first to warn me off the premises. So I hobbled after her towards the house. At the steps by the side-door she turned and gave me a hand. We passed across a stone-flagged hall and through a carpetless corridor, which brought us to the foot of the grand staircase: and a magnificent staircase it was, ornate with twisted balusters and hung with fine pictures, mostly by old Dutch masters. But no carpet covered the broad steps, and the pictures were perishing in their frames for lack of varnish. I had halted to stare up at a big Hondecoeter that hung in the sunlight over the first short flight of stairs — an elaborate “Parliament of Fowls”— when the girl turned the handle of a door to my right and entered.

“Uncle Peter, here is the gentleman who has called to see you.”

As I crossed the threshold I heard a chair pushed back, and a very old gentleman rose to welcome me at the far end of the cool and shadowy room; a tall white-haired figure in a loose suit of holland. He did not advance, but held out a hand tentatively, as if uncertain from what direction I was advancing. Almost at once I saw that he was stone-blind.

“But where is Uncle Melchior?” exclaimed Wilhelmina.

“I believe he is working at accounts,” the old gentleman answered — addressing himself to vacancy, for she had already run from the room. He shook hands courteously and motioned me to find a chair, while he resumed his seat beside a little table heaped with letters, or rather with bundles of letters neatly tied and docketed. His right hand rested on these bundles, and his fingers tapped upon them idly for a minute before he spoke again.

“You are a friend of Fritz’s? of my grandson?”

“I have not the pleasure of knowing him, sir. Your niece’s introduction leaves me to explain that I am just a wayfarer who had the misfortune to twist an ankle, an hour ago, on Skirrid, and crawled here to ask his way.”

His face fell. “I was hoping that you brought news of Fritz. But you are welcome, sir, to rest your foot here; and I ask your pardon for not perceiving your misfortune. I am blind. But Wilhelmina — my grandniece — will attend to your wants.”

“She is a young lady of very large heart,” said I. He appeared to consider for a while. “She is with me daily, but I have not seen her since she was a small child, and I always picture her as a child. To you, no doubt, she is almost a woman grown?”

“In feeling, I should say, decidedly more woman than child; and in manner.”

“You please ............