Musing thus, the owner of Greenlands turned aside from that solemn avenue, at the end of which there frowned upon him the noble red-brick dwelling-house of England’s Augustine era. He had no desire to reënter that stately abode, where the plump goddesses and nymphs of Kneller disported themselves upon the domed ceilings, and where the twelve Cæsars in black marble scowled upon him from their niches in the circular entrance-hall. Solomon himself could have been no more weary of the vineyards he had planted--and vines of one’s own planting are at best but poor creatures--than was Mr. Jerningham of Sir Godfrey’s nymphs and the scowling Cæsars. “And Cleopatra once tolerated one of _ces messieurs_,” he had said to himself sometimes, as he looked round the grand, gloomy chamber. “Cleopatra, the _espiègle_, the despotic, the Semiramis of Egypt, the Mary Stuart of the Nile, the Ninon of the ancient world.” Between the great avenue and the Queen Anne mansion there stretched the stiff walks of an Italian garden, and across this Mr. Jerningham went to a gate, which opened into the woodiest part of the park. A narrow path across this woody region brought him to the boundary of M. de Bergerac’s territory, protected by a six-foot holly-hedge, more formidable than any wall ever fashioned by mortal builder. A gate cut in this hedge opened into the quaint old flower-garden, and through this gate Mr. Jerningham went to visit his friend, after having passed unknown and unnoticed beneath the shadow of the house in which he had been born. “‘’Tis sweet to hear the watchdog’s honest bark bay deep-mouthed welcome--as we draw near home,’” Mr. Jerningham said to himself; “but it is not quite so sweet when the watchdog rushes out of his kennel, possessed with an evident thirst for one’s blood, as that old mastiff yonder rushed at me just now. Every traveller is not a Belisarius. Ah, here we are! there is the pretty old-fashioned lawn, with its flower-beds and evergreens, and there the low rambling cottage in which Jack Fermor, the bailiff, used to live when I was a boy. I remember going to him one summer morning to get my fishing-tackle mended, when I was a lad at Eton. Yes, this looks like a home! Dear old Theodore! I shall be content if he is only half as glad to see me as I shall be to see him.” The returning traveller found the door under the thatched porch unsecured by bolt or bar. In the heart of Greenlands Park no one ever thought of bolting a door. But the inmates of the Grange were not without their guardians. An enormous black dog sprang forth to meet the stranger as he approached the threshold, formidable as the dragon whose fiery eyes glared upon the luckless companions of Cadmus.