accept the invitation. He had taken a liking for the hale, vigorous old vicar, who had the archives of his family by rote, and an hour or two in his society would take him out of himself. So he turned back and accompanied his host to the vicarage, where he made a good impression on Mrs. Bristow by his cordial praise of her training of the choir and by appreciation of her strawberries and cream.
It was past four when he returned to Prior’s Tarrant, to be met in the entrance-hall by the butler with a face eloquent of “something wrong.”
“What is it, Manson?” he asked. “Mr. Bristow sent a boy, did he not, to say that I was lunching at the vicarage?”
“Yes, your Grace. It isn’t that,” was the agitated reply. “I have to report an outrage that’s been committed on one of the underservants. Jennings, the third gardener, was coming back from church through the copse in the park, when he was lassoed, your Grace, same as they do buffalo, I’ve been told, in foreign parts. A rope shot out of the bushes over his shoulders, and then a man ran up as he was struggling on the ground; but let him go, saying it was a joke. Jennings hasn’t got any
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