He had whetted my curiosity now, and presently I heard him nagging at the pretty girl who had first greeted me. After that he threw the stable door wide open, and dressed only, as I could see, in a loose dressing-gown and a pair of carpet slippers, he led the horse to a stall that had the half of a roof; crying to the maid to get her down to the house of a man he named, there to beg a feed of corn and the loan of a boy. But while he was doing it, he shivered incessantly, and seemed eaten up with fear.
"You appear to think that I'm putting up with you," said I, when I heard his orders; "there's no need to look after the nag--I shan't be here ten minutes."
"Not ten minutes!" he exclaimed, still with quavering voice. "Oh, but you will--when you've heard my talk. Would you see me murdered?"
I did not answer, being in the main amused at his attempts to get the horse out of the trap, and particularly to unbuckle the very stiff belly-band. The girl had gone tripping off with herself to the village as I thought; but though at that time I had no intention of staying beyond an hour with him, I unshafted the animal myself, and tethered the beast to the rickety manger, throwing my own rug across his loins; then I followed Ladd through a black and smoke-washed kitchen to a dingy apartment near the hall, and, the place being shuttered, he kindled a common paraffin lamp, which might have cost a shilling but would have been dear at two.
"I'll be getting the port," said he, casting a wistful look at me in the hope, perhaps, that I should decline his invitation to a glass, "you'll not mind refreshment after your drive?"
"Thanks; you may be sure I won't," said I; and while he was gone fumbling down the passage, I saw that his dining-room had once been a fine apartment, oak-panelled and spacious; and that ancestors, whose rubicund jowls spoke of "two-bottle" men, now seemed to survey the economy below with agony unspeakable. For the rest, there was little in the room but depressing Victorian chairs in mahogany, and a piano with a high back, such as our grandmothers played upon.
When Ladd came back, he had a bottle in his hand. I smiled openly when I saw that it was a pint; but he decanted it with a fine show of generosity, and pushing a glass to me, took up the matter which interested him at once.