Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/231

 went softly down the drive, and demanded admittance at the gate-house door.

William Goodman was the keeper and lived there, a widower, with John, his son, a sturdy six-foot yokel. They made a pair whom Heaven might have created especially for my business. They sat in the gatehouse kitchen at a meal of beef and ale. William Goodman—sly, ancient, lean—was a man of sense, and proved it by being faithful as a dog to the family he had served for forty years. He had only been once before the Justices, and the occasion was when he had cracked the sconce of a man who had contumeliously hinted within William's hearing that my Lord of Long Acre was not so handsome a nobleman as the Duke of Marlborough. After they had received me with the most horrible embarrassment, and Goodman, the younger, had had the misfortune to turn a jug of ale into his lap, I sat down and explained my mission as succinctly as I could.

"Have you a coal-hole under this kitchen?" I began.

"Yes, my lady," said the elder.

"Exactly as I thought," says I. "And suppose a man was put into it; could he very well get out?"

"Depends upon the man, your ladyship," says the elder, leering like a fox.

"One who did not happen to be a friend of the family," says I, mightily enjoying William Goodman's face.

"He might o' course," says he, with his natural