Shortly after luncheon he ordered his motor-car to be got ready to take him to the railway station at Carlisle, in time to catch the express to London at five; also a second car to take his secretary, dispatch boxes and odds and ends. The French cook was not given the dignity of a car. The cook, who was a personage in his way, would be driven to Little Salkeld station in the dogcart, and find his way to Carlisle by train. Leloir would go with his master. It was like the mobilization of a small army every time Sir Anthony Gyde chose to change his residence, even for a few days. At half-past two a small Arol-Johnston car, used for short distances, was brought to the door. Sir Anthony got into it, having given Leloir strict injunctions as to the luggage, etc. He told the man that he was about to visit an outlying farm on the estate, and that he would be back in time for the motor to take him to the train. Then he started. He was his own chauffeur. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VIII SKIRLE Cottage lies tucked away in a hollow of Blencarn Fell. The fells, as I have before indicated, are one great sweep of low hills facing the west; they are continuous and almost unbroken yet by the local custom they are divided into sections, each with a name of its own. Blencarn Fell, so called, perhaps, from the village of Blencarn at its foot, is as wild and, perhaps, in summer, as lovely as any other part of the Pennine Range. Skirle Cottage, lying in a depression of it, was as far removed from human eye as it is possible for a house to be. It was a fairly large cottage, a barn was attached to it in the Cumberland fashion, so that the whole building was of one piece. The hollow in which it lay, was, of a summer afternoon, perfumed with the smell of those wild flowers that grow in Cumberland as they grow nowhere else, and filled with the murmur of bees. At dusk of a summer’s evening it was a veritable cup of twilight and silence. Even in summer, when the sky was blue above, when the wild strawberries were in their glory and the hills were hazy with heat, there was something strangely melancholy about this tiny valley, with the little cottage nestling in its heart. There were days in the long winter of Cumberland when the valley and the cottage seen from above, presented a picture dreary to the point of being tragic. The high road, at the foot of the fells, was scarcely a quarter of a mile away, yet the cottage was quite invisible from it. The Arol-Johnston car, with its single occupant, drew up on the road level with the unseen cottage. Sir Anthony Gyde descended, and leaving the car to take care of itself, opened the gate, passed through, and struck up the rising ground.