The Duke followed the ride for some distance, the clamor of voices around the wrecked train growing every moment less distinct till they died away altogether, and he guessed that he was in the heart of the wood, half a mile from the scene of the disaster. Whether or no he was pursued he had no means of knowing, with such diabolical cunning pitted against him; but, at any rate, no sound of pursuit reached his straining ears, and he began to hope that his break-away had been undetected.
Suddenly the ride turned abruptly to the right, and at the end of a glade, some hundred yards further on, he saw the lights of a dwelling. Across the intervening years came a flash of remembrance. These must be the celebrated coverts of his neighbor, Sir Claude Asprey, and the house ahead must be the keeper's cottage where, when an Eton boy spending the holidays with his uncle at Prior's Tarrant, he had lunched as a member of Sir Claude's shooting-party ten years ago. The place was graven on his memory, because the day was a red-letter one by reason of his having shot his first pheasant thereon.
Without any definite plan in his head, but actuated by a longing for human companionship, however brief, he went up to the door of the cottage and knocked, his arrival being also heralded by the barking of dogs at the side of the house. The door was almost immediately thrown open by a stalwart, ruddy-faced man of sixty, who carried a candle and stared in open-mouthed wonder at a well-dressed visitor at such an hour and place. Beaumanoir looked at him closely, and smiled his first smile of pleasure since Forsyth's hand had gripped his on the day he landed.
"I can see you've forgotten me, Mayne," he said, "though I should have known you anywhere--time has touched you so slightly. Don't you recollect young Charley Hanbury, who came over with the Duke of Beaumanoir to a big shoot with Sir Claude in '91?"
A gleam shone in the honest keeper's keen eyes. "Of course I remember, sir," he replied, adding quickly: "Begging your Grace's pardon, for you'll be the Duke yourself now?'
"Yes, I am the Duke, Mayne, and a very unfortunate one," Beaumanoir laughed. "There has been a mild sort of smash-up on the railway yonder, and I started to walk to Prior's Tarrant rather than hang about for a relief train. I was a bit hazy about my direction, so I thought I'd inquire, and at the same time reassure you that it wasn't a poacher who was abroad in the woods. May I come in while you give me my bearings?"