The colts, driven by Alan Wayne, flashed over the brim of Red Hill to the level top. Coachman Joe’s jaw was hanging in awe, and so had hung since Mr. Alan had taken the reins. For the first time in their five years of equal life the colts had felt the cut of a whip, not in anger, but as a reproof for breaking. Coachman Joe had braced himself for the bolt, his hands itching to snatch the reins. But there had been no bolting, only a sudden settling down to business.
“Couldn’t of got here quicker if he’d let ’em bolt,” said he in subsequent description to the stable-hand and the cook. He snatched up a pail of water and poured it steadily on the ground. “Jest like that. He knew what was in the colts the minute he laid hands on ’em, and when he pulls ’em up at the barn door there wasn’t a drop left in their buckets, was there, Arthur?”
“And his face,” continued the coachman. “Most times Mr. Alan has no eyes to speak of, but to-day and that time Miss Nance stuck him with the hat-pin--’member, cook?--his eyes spread like a fire and eat up his face. This is a black day for the Hill. Somethin’ ’s going to happen. You mark me.”
In truth Mr. Alan Wayne had been summoned in no equivocal terms and, for all his haste, it was with nervous step he approached the house.
There was no den, no sanctuary beyond a bedroom, for any one at Maple House. No one brought work to Red Hill save such work as fitted into swinging hammocks and leafy bowers. Library opened into living-room and hall, hall into drawing-room, and drawing-room into the cool shadows and high lights of half-hidden mahogany and china closets. And here and there and everywhere doors opened out on to the Hill. It was a place where summer breezes entered freely and played, sure of a way out. Hence it was that Maple House as a whole became a tomb on that memorable spring morning when the colts first felt a master hand--a tomb where Wayne history was to be made and buried as it had been before.
Maple House sheltered a mixed brood. J. Y. Wayne, seconded by Mrs. J. Y., was the head of the family. Their daughter, Nance Sterling, and her babies represented the direct line, but the orphans, Alan Wayne and Clematis McAlpin, were on an equal footing as children of the house. Alan was the only child of J. Y.’s dead brother. Clematis was also of Wayne blood, but so intricately removed that her exact relation to the rest of the tribe was never figured out twice to the same conclusion. Old Captain Wayne, retired from the regular army, was an uncle in a different degree to every generation of Waynes. He was the only man on Red Hill who dared call for a whisky and soda when he wanted it.