Reaching the opposite side of the park there appeared before her for the third time that little old man, the foot-post. As the turnpike-road ran, the postman’s beat was twelve miles a day; six miles out from the town, and six miles back at night. But what with zigzags, devious ways, offsets to country seats, curves to farms, looped courses, and triangles to outlying hamlets, the ground actually covered by him was nearer one-and-twenty miles. Hence it was that Margery, who had come straight, was still abreast of him, despite her long pause. The weighty sense that she was mixed up in a tragical secret with an unknown and handsome stranger prevented her joining very readily in chat with the postman for some time. But a keen interest in her adventure caused her to respond at once when the bowed man of mails said, ‘You hit athwart the grounds of Mount Lodge, Miss Margery, or you wouldn’t ha’ met me here. Well, somebody hey took the old place at last.’ In acknowledging her route Margery brought herself to ask who the new gentleman might be. ‘Guide the girl’s heart! What! don’t she know? And yet how should ye—he’s only just a-come.—Well, nominal, he’s a fishing gentleman, come for the summer only. But, more to the subject, he’s a foreign noble that’s lived in England so long as to be without any true country: some of his letters call him Baron, some Squire, so that ’a must be born to something that can’t be earned by elbow-grease and Christian conduct. He was out this morning a-watching the fog. “Postman,” ’a said, “good-morning: give me the bag.” O, yes, ’a’s a civil genteel nobleman enough.’ ‘Took the house for fishing, did he?’ ‘That’s what they say, and as it can be for nothing else I suppose it’s true. But, in final, his health’s not good, ’a b’lieve; he’s been living too rithe. The London smoke got into his wyndpipe, till ’a couldn’t eat. However, I shouldn’t mind having the run of his kitchen.’ ‘And what is his name?’ ‘Ah—there you have me! ’Tis a name no man’s tongue can tell, or even woman’s, except by pen-and-ink and good scholarship. It begins with X, and who, without the machinery of a clock in’s inside, can speak that? But here ’tis—from his letters.’ The postman with his walking-stick wrote upon the ground, ‘BARON VON XANTEN’ CHAPTER III. The day, as she had prognosticated, turned out fine; for weather-wisdom was imbibed with their milk-sops by the children of the Exe Vale. The impending meeting excited Margery, and she performed her duties in her father’s house with mechanical unconsciousness.