"I suppose," she said, "that really you thought you were doing right in coming here and firing off guns without permission. It must be an astonishing thing for you to see this house of the Maitlands inhabited after so long. I do not blame your curiosity, but I fear I must ask you to send a competent man to repair our windows. For that we hold you responsible, Mr. Officer, and you, Mr. Justice of the Peace--you and your son Jo! Don't we, Louis?" "I will see to that myself!" a voice, the same that had spoken before, came from the crowd. Miss Irma searched the circle without, however, coming to a conclusion. I do think that her glance lingered longer on my face than on any of the others, perhaps because Gerty Greensleeves was leaning on my shoulder and whispering in my ear. (What a nuisance girls are, sometimes!) So the glance passed on, with something in it at once calm and simple and high. "If any of the gentlefolk of our station will call upon us," she went on, "we will tell _them_ how we came to be here--the clergyman of the parish--or----" here she hesitated for the first time, "or his wife." Instinctively she seemed to feel the difficulty. "Though we are not of their faith!" she added, smiling once more as with the air of serene condescension she had shown all through. Then she nodded, and swept a curtsey with an undulating grace which I thought to be adorable, in spite of the suspicion of irony in it. "Good-bye, good people," she said, letting her eyes again run the circuit of the sea of faces, reinforced by those who had been firing their blunderbusses and horse-pistols (now carefully concealed) so uselessly at the back windows of the house. "We are obliged for your visit. Salute them, Louis!" Obediently the child carried his hand to the curls on his brow in the same fashion I had seen soldiers do at the militia training on the Dumfries sands, but with the same smilingly tolerant air of receiving and acknowledging the homage of vassals which both of them had shown from the beginning. Then Miss Irma smiled upon us all once more, nodded to me (I am sure of it), and without another word, shut the door in our faces. CHAPTER IV FIRST FOOT IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE To understand what a sensation these strange events made in Eden Valley, it is necessary that you should know something of Eden Valley itself and how it was governed. Governed, you say? Was it not within the King's dominions, and governed like every other part of these his Majesty's kingdoms? Had we of the Wide Valley risen against constituted authority and filled all Balcary Bay between Isle Rathan and the Red Haven with floating tea-chests?