"Well, well," he chirped, just like an amiable robin; "and who would have thought of seeing you here, Mr. Mallow? You're here on business, I presume?"
"I have come down to stay with Lord Aldean at Casterwell, Mr. Dimbal," replied Mallow, graciously.
"Miss Bellairs' busi---- Ah, here is his lordship. How d'ye do, my lord? On the road to Casterwell, eh? I'm going there myself."
"To see Miss Bellairs, did you say?" asked Mallow, impatiently. "There's nothing wrong, I hope?"
"Good gracious, no. Why should there be anything wrong?"
"Why, indeed," said Aldean, laughing. "Lawyers and wrong never go together."
"Ha, ha! very good, my lord; but we are a much-maligned profession. No, Mr. Mallow, nothing is wrong with Miss Bellairs. On the contrary, everything is very right. I bring her the good news that Mr. Carson has arrived."
"Oh," said Mallow, with a glance at Aldean, "have you seen him?"
"Yes, he called yesterday at my office, and to-morrow he comes to Casterwell to see his future wife. Well, well; good-day, good-day, I see my fly, I must be off. Good-day, Mr. Mallow; my lord, good-day," and the little lawyer bustled off.
"So Carson isn't the sandal-wood man, after all," observed Aldean.
"No, God forgive me! I wish he were," replied Mallow, and frowned.
Casterwell is an aggressively antique village, the delight of landscape painters and enthusiasts of the hand camera. It has been painted and photographed times without number, and its two crooked streets, its market cross, its mediæval church and ruined castle are all of them familiar enough to the frequenters of London art galleries. Bicycles converge to it from the four quarters of England, transatlantic tourists twang the melodious American tongue under the gabled roof of its principal inn, the omnivorous kodaker clicks his shutter at donjon, battlement, and ivy-covered tower, and unscrupulous authors thieve its local legends for the harrowing of the public in Christmas numbers and magazines. The name is obviously of Latin origin, and from the Castraville of the middle ages we have the Casterwell of to-day. On the brow of an adjoining hill the circumvallations of the ubiquitous Romans show that the village originally received its name from a military post of the days of Caractacus and Boadicea. But the Imperial legions have marched into the outer darkness, the baron of the castle is a handful of dust, the founders of the church lie mouldering in their ornate tombs, and Casterwell survives them all: a quaint, pretty, peaceful spot, beautiful even in its decay.