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On one side was a tennis court, on the other a fountain, with a pool and water-lilies. The north wall was hidden by ancient yews; on the south two rows of plane trees, cut square, made a long arbour. At the back of the garden there were fine old lindens.
The dark windows with their thick white casements, the round-topped dormers, the steps up to the door, and a prim circle of grass which seemed to lie like a carpet on the pale gravel, gave the feeling of a picture; the whole being framed in the sombre yews of shrubberies which bordered the drive.
Tall screens of clipped yews, cut square ten feet high and five feet thick, divide the beds upon one side of the gardens, so that as you walk among them you are enveloped in a green yet pleasant solitude.
Flowers may blaze with colour in an open field and who has not marvelled as he passes in the train the seed-ground of some great horticulturist? but seen thus they have but little charm. In a college garden a border filled with delphiniums and madonna lilies is backed by sombre yews, while the thick foliage of elm or chestnut quiets harmoniously the farther distance.
The man's family had served my own for as many generations as the rooks had builded in our yews, and so, on one side at least, he inherited blind loyalty to my name. I say on one side, for his blood was mixed; his father had married a vagrant, a half-gypsy Irish girl who begged among the villages.
"She gazed down the line of the yew-trees, and watched how, as he went for the most part with a firm step, he yet shrank somewhat from the shadows of the yews; his long brown hair flowing downward, swayed with him as he walked; and the golden threads interwoven with it, as the fashion was with the warriors in those days, sparkled out from among it now and then; and the faint, far-off moonlight lit up the waves of his mail-coat; he walked fast, and was disappearing in the shadows of the trees near the moat, but turned before he was quite lost in them, and waved his ungauntletted hand; then she heard the challenge of the warder, the falling of the drawbridge, the swing of the heavy wicket-gate on its hinges; and, into the brightening lights, and deepening shadows of the moonlight he went from her sight; and she left the porch and went to the chapel, all that night praying earnestly there.
"Have you ever seen that lady down here before, sergeant?" asked Walter presently. "Yes, sir. If I don't make a mistake, it is the same lady who asked me the way to The Yews soon after Mr. Bailey took the house the lady who came with the man whom she addressed as 'Doctor'!" "Are you quite certain of this?" "Not quite certain. She was dressed differently, in brown with a different hat and a veil."
"Behind the yews in the garden?" he said, disregarding her presence. "Ah, I'll meet you there!" The McMurrough answered, pot-valiant. "And, more by token, order your coffin, for you'll need it!" Drink and rage left no place in his brain for fear. "That will be seen to-morrow," the Englishman answered, in a tone that chilled the girl's marrow.
"We'll take good care of that, sir," laughed the local sergeant breezily, as he left his companion's side and crossed the road so that he could see the bend. "Why!" he exclaimed, "she ain't goin' to Asheldham after all! She's taken the footpath to the left that leads into Steeple! Evidently she knows the road!" "Then we are free to go straight along to The Yews, eh?
There are no green lawns, no twisted yews, no weeping willows; the few fir trees hold themselves stiffly up, as though in pride at this triumph of the vegetable over the animal; and the great bushes of faded geranium only throw into relief the regular lines of limestone mounds, each with its prim wooden cross of advertisement.
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