And with a last hand-shake, Jeffray clattered out of Rookhurst market-place, feeling a happier man than when he had entered it.
Clearing the streets of the little town, he saw that heavy clouds were massing in the northwestern sky. The atmosphere had been preternaturally clear, the domed foliage of the distant woods, the swell of the southern downs standing out in beautiful distinctness under the June sky. Old Gladden had been grumbling all the morning at the heat, prophesying thunder and a heavy fall of rain. As Jeffray climbed slowly up the long slope towards the forest ridge, the black outliers moving ahead of the massive wall of vapor began to stream across the sun. The whole landscape was bathed in a strange splendor of slanting sunlight, the woods and meadows lying a wondrous green under the imminent gloom of the purple north.
Jeffray pricked up his horse, and came at a fast trot into Rodenham village. Already there were vague mutterings running athwart the distant sky. Outside the Wheat Sheaf Inn Jeffray came upon some twenty troopers of a regiment of Light-Horse drinking beer at the wooden tables, their horses picketed upon the green. Some of the men were watching the thunder-clouds, reckoning on the drenching of the outer man as they were moistening the inner. Their cornet, a dark-faced youth with a hooked nose and a libidinous mouth, came to the doorway of the inn with George Gogg as Jeffray passed. The innkeeper saluted the Squire, the officer staring at him with an insolence of militant youth, as though remarking, “And who the devil may you be?” Jeffray attached no significance to the incident for the moment. He supposed that the troopers were on the march, and that the cornet had called a halt out of courtesy to the coming storm.
As Jeffray turned in under the yews at the park gate he was stopped by the lodge-keeper’s wife running out in a red petticoat and a very slatternly pair of stays. The woman, who was something of a drunkard, appeared flushed and excited. She had the eager, officious look of a common creature big with information.
“My man’s gone up to the house, your honor; there’s been a scrimmage at the priory.”
The woman appeared to swell with the satisfaction of her sensational confession. Her red and coarse-featured face shone out at Jeffray with every suggestion of ill omen.