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"Faith, you speak true. If we'd have let him alone, we'd be right as a trivet now. And Saturday gone, we might have snapped our fingers in his face. Well, well, it's my own fault. I've just a poor head for scheming, Hildebrand, and that's the plain fact. But I count upon you. You'll go down to the village at once?"

"I'll be down and back again while you're at dinner, sir," said I.

"And if your brother said nothing compromising"

"In that case you're as safe here as anywhere. But I'm doubting that he didn't."

"You're quick to make the worst of it," said he very gloomily; and with that I left him to finish his dressing.

It being dinner time, there were few about the place to take any notice of my doings; and I slipped through the park, and so, by the long drive, to the Melbourne Road without a word to any man. Though it was late in July, the evenings were long-drawn, and when I stood upon the hilltop, the windows of the old house below seemed ablaze with the red light of the sun. I could see Mr. Robert Oakley and his daughter waiting in the garden, as I thought, for Sir Nicolas; and while I stood a minute to watch them, I realized for the first time the whole of our misfortune.

"Three days more," said I to myself, "and rogue or no rogue, Sir Nicolas, you could have stood with