beasts themselves rounded the corner of the house like a pack of wolves, slavering for our throats. I confess that I screamed, and clutched at poor Hibbs, who thrust me behind him and menaced the curs with a stout cudgel—taken up some time past as a walking stick, but performing now a dearer service.
“Jasper! Fang! You there, Beelzebub! Heel! Heel, I say!”
The commanding voice came from the doorway, now streaming with light as the sturdy oak was unbarred. A lanthorn held high revealed a gendeman's face—though a countenance most harshly-drawn, under a windswept mop of black hair. The master of High Down, I presumed; and masterly enough with his dark brows heavy and knit, his eyes glowing and fierce, and his nose as sharply hooked as a bird of prey's. A man of middlish age, perhaps five-and-thirty, arrayed in knee breeches and a white shirt quite open at the collar, his stock being put aside as though he were in the act of retiring. His countenance was suffused with a most ungentlemanly rage—the violence of his great dogs, it seemed, being mirrored in the spirits of their master.
“Who the Devil are you?” he cried, with a glower for the beasts, now cowering at his feet, and a glower for ourselves—and so Hibbs and I were welcomed to High Down Grange.
“Miss Jane Austen, of Bath,” I replied, in a tone that betrayed a quaver.
“Miss Jane Austen of Bath, and her merry man,” our host said caustically, with a look for poor Hibbs. “And what in God's name brings you out on such a night? Some unholy pilgrimage?”5
“A gentleman of better breeding and greater charity might have saved such questions for the comfort of his drawing-room,” I retorted, my patience thoroughly spent. The rain, though diminished to a fine drizzle, was still as wet; and its continued descent upon my drenched cap and shawl did nothing to improve my temper. “We are clearly driven to your door by the utmost extremity, sir, and if any alternative served, should never have troubled you longer—for you are undoubtedly lacking in the sensibilities of a true gentleman, and the assistance of a common labourer should be given with greater goodwill, I am sure.”
“Undoubtedly,” he said, and though his lip curled cynically at the word, my tart rebuke appeared to soften him a little. His choler drained away, and I thought him about to speak in a more measured tone, when a small sound caused him to turn, and the rings of light emanating from the lamp he held shifted and welled like a tide of water across the darkened courtyard. I turned, and started in fright, and reached again for Hibbs's arm; for we were held at bay by the business end of a very imposing blunderbuss, levelled in the hands of a stable boy—of malevolent intent, to judge by his aspect.
‘Put up the gun, Toby,” the master of High Down said gendy. “You need not be threatening a bedraggled woman. She looks harmless enough.”
“She ain't no woman, Mr. Sidmouth, sir. She's a lady to you.” Hibbs's hands were clenching and unclenching at his belt. That he kept a pistol there, for fear of highwaymen, I well knew; and that he had left it with my father, the better to safeguard the ladies, I surmised he very much regretted.
“Be off wi’ ye,’ the boy said menacingly; but he lowered the blunderbuss, with evident mistrust. “'re no more in a pack o’ spies, ye are. Be off, ‘fore I blows ye down the lane!”
“Toby!” Mr. Sidmouth—for so I assumed him to be, as Hibbs had named him—strode swiftly from the doorway to the boy's side, with nary a glance for ourselves. He pried the gun from Toby's hands and turned him towards the back of the house, from whence he had appeared. “Tell Mary we've company, and then fetch Miss Sera-phine, there's a good fellow.”
“Run ‘em off, Mr. Sid,” the boy said, by way of reply. “They're here as ‘formers, I'll lay my soul on't.”
A sound bussing on the bottom was his only answer, and the master of High Down turned once more to face us. “My apologies,” he told us. “The boy has yet to learn his manners.”
“You astonish me.” My tone was dry. “And with such a paragon as yourself for instruction?”
In the lamp's glow, Sidmouth's mouth tightened, and the black brows lowered over his eyes. I felt sure that in a moment he should drive us down the hill with the butt of