“... Tody is very pleased to see the lady and gentleman. If the gentleman acts fair by Tody, then ’e won’t have nothing to complain of. But when they swindling Abbotts as don’t belong to set foot in Parc Gooth, walk in with their tales of Mr. and Mrs. Lacey who are a generous lady and gentleman which they Abbotts are neither one nor t’other, why, then Tody remembers he was engaged by Miss Gregson and no one else, and ’e packs up and ’e goes....” To Doug and Ursula the whole Parc Gooth narrative was by now a confusion, in which irrelevant names and grotesque sinister persons bobbed up and vanished as in an unreasonable dream. Ursula did not attempt any more to untwist the rights and wrongs of it all; but, dwelling in the house with her was an uneasiness that swelled almost to fear ... after all, they were “foreigners” among the natives of Arcadia; and the matter-of-fact natives told strange legends about other “foreigners” who had settled down in the locality, perhaps seeking for peace or healing or burial ... and they had all been ruined; sold up; shot themselves; the least among them were labelled “freaks.” Such as, for instance, Mrs. Fawcett, whose little house in the village was stifled with ivy, and a-swarm with cats: a frowsy temple dedicated to cat-worship; some of them sick, and some slow with kittens. And young Fawcett, her son, grey for his forty years and “queerish,” still remembered that he had years ago been a journalist, and still wrote “topical” articles for the papers; but news was stale before it reached St. Miniot; and more stale before the article was laboriously conceived, written and sent off. Once on sight of Ursula and Doug, he had leapt a stile and rushed towards them across three fields. “Excuse me, but _have_ you read ‘Pendennis’?” he panted “Oh, you have? I’m so glad. Good day” ... and rushed off again. Doug roared with laughter, but Ursula shuddered, and for an instant hated the bright glinting sea and hard-coloured gorse. Was this the result of living in Arcadia? [VI] MR. WENN, shortly afterwards, drove them into Gullick to sign the lease at his lawyer’s; and beguiled the eleven miles of monotonous road by anecdotes of his many successes in “doing” people, with the same ingenuous charm as an executioner might display towards his victims in a tumbril, by entertaining them with sunny accounts of his prowess with the axe. “This lawyer chap of yours,” asked Doug with a not unnatural misgiving, “is he a decent sort?” “Oh, Roberts? He’m a gentleman’s lawyer, Mr. Barrison,” and Wenn produced his famous straight-between-the-eyes look. “They call un Gentleman Roberts hereabout, and that’s the truth. Mitch”--to a grey, bent henchman whom he had brought along in the jingle to lead the horse up the hills, and--obviously--to corroborate his statements--“what do they call Mr. Roberts hereabouts?” “Gentleman Roberts,” responded Joshua Mitch, promptly.