But before ever he set eyes on the Squire he had already almost forgotten the errand that had brought him. As the servant showed him to the dining-room he saw that noble ruin of a staircase, and his eyes became illumined. Then, in the dining-room, those same eyes rested on the coffered ceiling and the portraits and the wide mullioned lattice. By the time the Squire entered he was adoring the stately stone fireplace. He swung round, hearing the Squire's step. "Magnificent, magnificent!" he cried. "Show me over the house--I beg you to show me over the house!----" The Squire, who had had this kind of visitor before (though none with quite that perilous smoulder in his eye that Terry had) naturally concluded that a fellow-antiquary, finding himself in the neighbourhood, had permitted himself to beg for a sight of the faded glories of the Plas. "I'll show you over part of the house with pleasure," said the Squire; and he did so. "Magnificent!" Terry cried again, when they were once more back in the dining-room. "And oh, that rood-screen--early sixteenth--and those sedilia--in your Church over there! I spent an hour there as I came along." "Oh, you came Porth Neigr way, did you?" said the Squire. As if he had previously written the Squire a letter setting forth his business in detail, which therefore he need not repeat, Terry leaped light-heartedly ahead. "Yes, sir--and then, after that, to come upon those incredible Chapels! (That's a misnomer, by the way, unless they contain relics.) ... Of course, after that I'm not surprised at anything these people do--fences or anything else----" The Squire was reaching port from the sideboard.--"Eh?" he said, not quite understanding. "_Those_ places an expression of religious emotion!" Terry cried, throwing up his hands. "Of course, what's happened was a perfectly natural result! Commit such an outrage on the æsthetic sense as that and--and _no_ fence is safe! If I'd seen those Chapels first I'd as soon have bought a volcano as that land! They ought to have been mentioned by the vendors--flagrant _suppressio veri_--deliberate concealment of a material fact--an action ought to lie--by Jove, I've a good mind to take advice about it!----" "I beg your pardon?" said the puzzled Squire. A very few questions served to enlighten him. His mouth twitched as he filled his harebrained visitor's glass. "Well," he said, "I don't quite follow your processes, but your result seems all right. If you mean there's some connection between the Chapels and your fences being pulled down, I dare say you're not very far wrong. The places of worship do settle a good many things indirectly here. But our own Establishment's been called a branch of the Civil Service, so I don't see how we can complain if some of their activities are a little secular too." "'A little secular!'" echoed Terry. "Pulling down fences 'a little secular!' ... Now I'm anxious not to go to extreme lengths----"