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Sir John Bristol! There, gentlemen, was a brave, honest man! A man of spirit and of a humour! If you crossed him, if you toyed with him, his mirth was rough, his hand was hard, he was relentless as iron. But for a man who stood his ground and fought a bold fight and met squarely the old man’s eyes, there was nothing Sir John would not do.

After all his weary travels by land and sea, Philip Marsham had at last come back to find a man whom he had seen but once and for a brief time. Yet in that man he had such complete confidence as he had never had in any other, and since Jamie Barwick had left the man’s service and taken the inn — who knew?

Striding over the same rolling country road that he had tramped with Martin long before, and coming soon to the park, he skirted it and pressed on, keeping meanwhile his eyes and wits about him, until he perceived a gate and a porter’s lodge. He went to the gate and finding it ajar slipped through and made haste up a long avenue with overarching trees. A man from the lodge came out and angrily called after the intruder, but Phil never looked back. The avenue turned to the left and he saw at a distance the great house; he was of no mind to suffer hindrance or delay.

The sunset sky threw long, still shadows across the grass, and countless wandering branches of ivy lay like