"This is no place for such deliberations. I beg you earnestly to say no more here and now. Reserve it until later."

"No, I must speak. If I don't speak out now, when shall I get another chance?…My engagement has been a ghastly mistake…It must have always been in the back of my mind, but now I see it all clearly for the first time…" She crouched nearly double, and covered her face with her two hands.

Judge, much agitated, got up.

"I can't listen to this. It's impossible for me to discuss such a subject. It rests entirely between you and your own heart."

"I made the terrible blunder of imagining that identity of tastes and friends means love. I took things too much for granted…His nature had no depth…He has never suffered. It isn't in him."

"You must think it over in quietness. Say no more now."

She sat up suddenly, and stared at him.

"You throw me to him, then?-you who profess to have such ideal love for me!"

Judge was silent.

"So you don't love me?"

"In the end you will understand that I love you deeply and truly."

She slowly rose to her feet. "Then what do you advise me to do?"

"Do nothing at all, but wait."

"You have no questions for me?"

"What questions?"

"I love no one but you," said Isbel. She caught his hand, and crushed it hard in hers; then abruptly turned her back on him…Judge stood like one transfixed.

At the same moment Mrs. Richborough came into the room. Her natural pallor was intensified, while her face was set and drawn, as though she had received a shock.

"Oh, what's the matter?" exclaimed Isbel, taking a step in her direction.

The older woman swayed, as if about to fall. Judge hastened forward to support her.

"I'm afraid I've just seen a sight which I can only regard as a warning. As you look out of the window there is a man, with his back turned. He looked round, and then I saw his face. I can't describe it…I think I'll go downstairs, if you don't mind."

The others looked at one another.

"Shall I take you down?" asked Judge.

"If you would assist me to the head of the stairs, I shall be all right."

He asked no questions, but at once supported her from the room. Isbel followed. On arriving at the top of the staircase, he lent the dazed woman his arm down the first few steps, then watched her out of sight before rejoining his companion.

Again they gazed at each other.

"You heard what she said," remarked Judge quietly. "Under the circumstances I don't feel justified in asking you to accompany me into that room."

"Are you going?"

"Yes, I'm going."

"Then I shall go, too."

Chapter XV THE MUSIC OF SPRING

They walked over to the right-hand door, which Judge, after turning the handle, at once kicked wide open with his foot…A sudden and unanticipated flood of brilliant sunshine, streaming through the room form an open window on the further side, momentarily blinded them, so that they staggered back with the shock.

Judge was the first to recover himself.

"It's all right, we can go in. The room's empty."

Isbel hastened to the window. It was breast-high. There was no glass in it, but it possessed a stout wooden shutter, opening outwards, which at present was swung to its full extent squarely against the outside wall. The aperture of the window was so narrow that there was barely space for their two heads together, and she found her smooth cheek grazing his harsh one.

From out of doors came not only the sunlight but the song of birds, the loud sighing of the wind in its passage through the trees, and an indescribable fresh, sweet smell, as of meadow grass, turned-up earth, and dew-drenched flowers. It seemed more like spring than autumn.

"Where are we, then?" was Isbel's first inquiry, uttered in a tone of bewilderment. "How do we come to be to high up from the ground?"

"I don't recognise any of it. It's all new to me."

From the foot of the house wall, forty feet below, the free country started. Judge stared in vain for familiar landmarks-the more he gazed, the more puzzled he became. Not only had his own grounds disappeared, but neither in the foreground nor in the distance was there a single sign of human occupancy or labour. Look where he would, fields, hedgerows, roads, lanes, houses, had vanished entirely out of the landscape.

A bare hillside of grass and chalk, perhaps a couple of hundred feet high, fell away sharply from the house, to terminate in a miniature valley along which a brook, glittering in the sunlight, wound its way. Beyond it there was a corresponding hill up, but not so steep or high; and here the woods began; an undulating but unbroken forest appeared to extend right to the horizon, many miles distant. The intensely blue sky was adorned with cirrus-clouds, while the dazzling sun was high above their heads, about half a point to the right. Apart, altogether, from the strangeness of the scenery, anything less like a late October afternoon would be hard to imagine; the forests were brilliantly green, many of the smaller, isolated trees in the valley were crowned with white blossom, while the air itself held that indefinable spirit of wild sweetness which is inseparable from a spring morning.

"Just look at that man!" said Isbel, suddenly.

He was sitting on the slope of the hill, directly opposite their window and not a stone's throw from them, but half hidden by the crest of the small hollow which he had selected for his perch, which explained why they had not previously noticed him. He sat motionless, facing the valley, with his back to the house; what he was doing there they could not imagine. It was his extraordinary attire which had evoked Isbel's exclamation. Only his head, the uppper half of his back, and one out-stretched leg were visible; but the leg was encased in a sage-green trouser, tightly cross-gartered with yellow straps, the garment on his back resembled, as far as could be seen, a purple smock, and the hair of his hatless head fell in a thick, bright yellow mane as far as his shoulders.

Notwithstanding Isbel's amazement, she began to laugh.

"No wonder poor Mrs. Richborough was startled! Is it a man, or a tulip?"

"He looks like an ancient Saxon come to life," replied Judge, also laughing, but more moderately.

"Ulf, perhaps."

"Very likely," he agreed, without understanding her.

"Cry out and ask him if his name's Ulf."

"But who was Ulf?"

"Don't you know? Why he's the man who built your house. The trolls ran away with him, poor fellow! and probably he's been sitting here ever since, yearning to get back home again…Do call out."

"You really want me to call?"

"If you don't I shall, and that will be immodest."

Judge shouted at the top of his voice. The man neither responded nor turned his head.

"Again!" commanded Isbel, laughing. "Louder-much louder! As if someone were running off with property of yours…"

This time Judge roared, and then Isbel added her strange clanging cry twice or thrice, laughing between whiles; but still they were unable to attract his attention.

Temporarily abandoning the effort, she turned her head and glanced sideways at Judge, with an almost joyous expression. "We can't be in October. That hawthorn's blooming…and look at those beeches over there, with their pale-green, transparent leaves…Hark!…"

They kept quiet for a minute…A distant cuckoo was calling. The cry was regularly repeated, at very short intervals.

Judge rubbed his eyes, in actual doubt whether he were awake or dreaming. "It's spring, sure enough-but how can it be?"

"Oh, if we could only get down into it all!"

Both instinctively measured the wall beneath them with their eyes, but the distance to the ground was too great, the footholds were too precarious.