“He’s expecting to retire, then?” asked Mr. Fransemmery, who had a weakness for village gossip. “Had enough of it, eh?”
“He’ll not retire while Sir Anthony lives,” answered Mrs. Braxfield.
“From what I hear that won’t be long,” observed Mr. Fransemmery. “When I called at the Court, yesterday morning, to enquire, as I do every day, ma’am, I understood from Miss Markenmore that according to the doctors her father might go any time.”
“He’s a very old man, Mr. Fransemmery,” said Mrs. Braxfield. “He was near sixty when he married the second time. However, whether he lasts long or little, Braxfield’ll stop with him till the end.”
“Good old faithful servant, Braxfield,” observed Mr. Fransemmery. “Well—when he does retire, ma’am, you’ve got a very cozy nest for him to come to! Lucky man!—pleasant home, delightful surroundings, and—the handsomest woman in the South Country! Eh, ma’am?”
“Lord, Mr. Fransemmery, what a flatterer you are!” said Mrs. Braxfield with a conscious laugh. “Go away with you!—you’ll be turning my head.”
Mr. Fransemmery laughed too, and went. He had a trick of teasing people, and derived great pleasure from it; its exercise kept him in good spirits. He was in high good spirits now, and he began to whistle when he had passed Woodland Cottage and had stepped out on the open downs beyond. But before he had gone far across the springy turf his whistling stopped abruptly. Rounding a corner of the undulating surface Mr. Fransemmery suddenly saw that which made him pause. A hundred yards or so in front, a little to the left of the broad grass-covered foot-track which led from Markenmore Court to Mitbourne, a village on the further side of the downs, lay a deep depression in the land, locally known as Markenmore Hollow. It was, in reality, a long-disused chalk pit of unusual extent, but since its workings had been given up, a hundred years previously, thick under-growth of gorse and bramble had accumulated there beneath a cluster of old Scotch fir, and the place was now a wilderness as lonely as it was wild. But it was not lonely at that moment. Standing by one of the Scotch firs, in close proximity to a great clump of gorse, were men—one of them, from his uniform, Mr. Fransemmery immediately recognized as the Markenmore village policeman; another, from his velveteen coat, as Sir Anthony Markenmore’s gamekeeper; the third was a farm-labourer whom Mr. Fransemmery often met of a morning as the man crossed the downs on his way to work in the village.