AT MIDNIGHT
CHAPTER I
They sat in their American buggy at the turn of an English road—an Australian bride and bridegroom, on their wedding tour. It was a bit of the "old country" that had not been syndicated and modernized since the bridegroom had seen it last—when he was a young fellow at Cambridge, paying visits to the houses of his university chums because his own home was inaccessible. Tall hedges embraced the ripening wheat-fields still; brambly ditches yawned beneath them. There were dense woods hereabouts that made green tunnels of the road, and there were thickets of fern and wild vines and bushes—acres of unprofitable beauty—under the useless trees. The spot was a joy to the sentimental wayfarer, and Mrs. Wingate's gaze meant rapture not expressible in words."This," she sighed, "is England, Billy."
She meant that this was the England of her romantic dreams—England as described to her by exiled parents and in scores of delightful books.
"And this," said Billy, "is the place I told you of."
He pointed with his whip.
Just below and before them rose an ancient gateway, iron and stone, with much heraldic ornament. An ivy-mantled lodge with curly chimney-stacks stood immediately within; and beyond, sloping gently upward for a mile or more, a straight, grassed drive between thick woods—a beautiful green vista, three times as wide as an ordinary park avenue—was closed, on an elevated horizon, by the indistinct but imposing mass of a great grey house, one of those "stately homes of England" which are our pride and boast. It was a lovely picture, and a lovely atmosphere through which to view it—tinted with the hues of approaching sunset on a late summer day. A few head of deer were browsing quietly on the shadow-patterned sward; thrushes were calling to each other from wood to wood; partridges flying homeward to their nests in the corn, disturbed by the sound of the horses' hoofs.
