“Because, my dear girl,” I answered, “it is less unlike the house I wanted than other houses I have seen. When we are young we make up our minds to try and get what we want; when we have arrived at years of discretion we decide to try and want what we can get. It saves time. During the last two years I have seen about sixty houses, and out of the lot there was only one that was really the house I wanted. Hitherto I have kept the story to myself. Even now, thinking about it irritates me. It was not an agent who told me of it. I met a man by chance in a railway carriage. He had a black eye. If ever I meet him again I’ll give him another. He accounted for it by explaining that he had had trouble with a golf ball, and at the time I believed him. I mentioned to him in conversation I was looking for a house. He described this place to me, and it seemed to me hours before the train stopped at a station. When it did I got out and took the next train back. I did not even wait for lunch. I had my bicycle with me, and I went straight there. It was—well, it was the house I wanted. If it had vanished suddenly, and I had found myself in bed, the whole thing would have seemed more reasonable. The proprietor opened the door to me himself. He had the bearing of a retired military man. It was afterwards I learnt he was the proprietor. “I said, ‘Good afternoon; if it is not troubling you, I would like to look over the house.’ We were standing in the oak-panelled hall. I noticed the carved staircase about which the man in the train had told me, also the Tudor fireplaces. That is all I had time to notice. The next moment I was lying on my back in the middle of the gravel with the door shut. I looked up. I saw the old maniac’s head sticking out of a little window. It was an evil face. He had a gun in his hand. “‘I’m going to count twenty,’ he said. ‘If you are not the other side of the gate by then, I shoot.’ “I ran over the figures myself on my way to the gate. I made it eighteen. “I had an hour to wait for the train. I talked the matter over with the station-master. “‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there’ll be trouble up there one of these days.’ “I said, ‘It seems to me to have begun.’ “He said, ‘It’s the Indian sun. It gets into their heads. We have one or two in the neighbourhood. They are quiet enough till something happens.’ “‘If I’d been two seconds longer,’ I said, ‘I believe he’d have done it.’ “‘It’s a taking house,’ said the station-master; ‘not too big and not too little. It’s the sort of house people seem to be looking for.’ “‘I don’t envy,’ I said, ‘the next person that finds it.’