He--Rupert--stamped off when the door was closed against him, feeling he would like to stamp upon Cris himself. Arrived in front of the lodge, he stood and whistled, and presently Ann Canham looked from the upper casement in her nightcap.
"Why, it's never you, Master Rupert!" she exclaimed, in intense surprise.
"They have locked me out, Ann. Can you manage to come down and open the door without disturbing your father? If you can, I'll lie on the settle for to-night."
Once inside, there ensued a contest. In her humble way, begging pardon for the presumption, Ann Canham proposed that Master Rupert should occupy her room, and she'd make herself contented with the settle. Rupert would not hear of it. He threw himself on the narrow bench they called the settle, and protested that if Ann said another word about giving up her room, he would go out and spend the night in the avenue. So she was fain to go back to it herself.
A dreary night on that hard bench; and the morning found him cold and stiff. He was stamping one foot on the floor to stamp life into it, when old Canham entered, leaning on a crutch. Ann had told him the news, and the old man was up before his time.
"But who shut you out, Master Rupert?" he asked.
"Ann says Mr. Cris went in pretty late last night. After she had locked the big gate."
"Cris came up whilst I was ringing to be let in. He went in himself, but would not let me enter."
"He's a reptile," said old Canham in his anger. "Eh me!" he added, sitting down with difficulty in his armchair, and extending the crutch before him, "what a mercy it would have been if Mr. Joe had lived! Chattaway would never have been stuck up in authority then. Better the Squire had left Trevlyn Hold to Miss Diana."
"They say he would not leave it to a woman."
"That's true, Master Rupert. And of his children there were but his daughters left. The two sons had gone. Rupert the heir first: he died on the high seas; and Mr. Joe next."
"Mark, why did Rupert the heir go to sea?"
Old Canham shook his head. "Ah, it was a bad business, Master Rupert, and it's as well not to talk of it."
"It was a bad business, I say. He, the heir, had fallen into wild ways, got to like bad company, and that. He went out one night with some poachers--just for the fun of it. It wasn't on these lands. He meant no harm, but he was young and random, and he went out and put a gauze over his face as they did,--just, I say, for the fun of it. Master Rupert, that night they killed a gamekeeper."