Beaumanoir was conscious that standing in a lighted doorway was hardly the place for him just then, and he followed into a roomy kitchen, professionally eloquent with its array of guns and sporting prints. Mayne explained that his wife had just gone up to bed, and that all the youngsters, whom perhaps it might please his Grace to remember, were out in the world. Beaumanoir dropped into a chair, and to gratify his kindly host accepted a horn tankard of home-brewed ale, which he sipped while he satisfied Mayne’s curiosity about the "accident." He would have given much to take the keeper into his confidence about the personal element in the outrage, but that luxury could not be indulged in without impossible disclosures. Considering that he had eliminated the most pertinent part of his narrative, he was unable to account for the growing gravity with which it was received till Mayne disburdened himself. "I wonder your Grace can take your narrow escape so lightly," said the keeper. "Providence must have been in two minds about you to-night." "How so?" asked the Duke, starting. Surely General Sadgrove had not been spreading indiscreet reports in the county already. There had not been time. "It isn’t a fortnight since his Grace your uncle and your cousin were killed on the railway," replied the keeper. The coincidence had not occurred to Beaumanoir, nor if it had would it have troubled him; but he was relieved to find that Mayne’s solemnity was due to the traditional superstition of a gamekeeper. To have his terrible secret, or so much as a hint of it, suspected by this cheery old associate of the happiest day of his boyhood would have been a blow indeed. "Yes," he admitted, though in a different sense; "I have certainly had a narrow escape, and it has shaken me a little, Mayne. On second thoughts, if you would let me lie down for a few hours on that very comfortable settle, I would defer my departure for Prior’s Tarrant till the morning. I really don’t feel quite equal to trudging so far to-night." This was true enough, for though he was physically fit he dreaded leaving this haven of rest and apparent security for the darkling wood, in which his remorseless foes were probably searching for him. The promised escort of the unsuspecting keeper would be of little value, for, unwarned of any peril, the man would be simply an encumbrance, equally liable with himself to swift death at any moment at the hands of the enormous odds against them. Apart from other considerations, he could not subject the good fellow to such a risk, though he would have preferred, had it been possible to proceed alone, to have got to Prior’s Tarrant that night and so have ended the suspense under which Forsyth and the General must be laboring.