So I was introduced to our young murderer, or he to me, I forget which of us was the personage in Joan's eyes, and we sought the trap. Joan drove, and paved the way for our better acquaintance by telling Mr. Smith, in these words, that I was "still young at heart." And her pleasant young assassin called me "Sir." I suppose I am entitled to be called "Sir" by these youngsters, but I am far from standing on my rights in this respect. He had his Joan, and I saw no reason for rubbing it in. People who go about murdering other people need not lay quite so much stress on the minor conventions. "Yes, sir, thanks--practically all right again," he said as we bowled across that high world of flaming poppies and silky corn. "But I say--I'm afraid you'll have rather a crow to pluck with me." All things considered, I thought one crow a particularly modest estimate; but "Oh?" I said inquiringly. "Yes. I know it's your room, sir, and any old fleabag would do for me, but it's all Joan and Mrs. Esdaile. In fact, I carried all my gear out this morning, but they've toted everything back again." "Oh, but he _likes_ that little room at the end!" Joan cooingly reassured him. "He gets the morning sun, and it's beautifully cool in the afternoons----" "If you mean that I'm in the habit of sleeping in the afternoons I wish to inform you that I'm not," I answered her coldly. "And if the room you speak of is that little cupboard place just above where the hens are fed----" "Yes, that's the one," she answered with a darling smile. "I call it quite large, and I've put you one or two nice books to read, and I arranged the flowers myself. Come up, Robin!" So Smith had the room that I, the introducer of these Esdaile people to my loved Santon, had hitherto always had, and I was given the one with the morning sun. You might suppose from Joan's words that the sun shone directly in, filling it with gayety and brightness. Not a bit of it. That morning sunlight she so extolled was a greenish and aquarium-like half light thrown up from the steep bit of paddock that comprised the whole of my view. And, lest I should oversleep, an enormous bronze cock, mounting to the little sloping roof of the hen-house below, was able to sound his clarion note practically on the drum of my ear. II