It was about as cheerless an evening as one could very well select for a drive in an open vehicle. The stranger, enveloped in his waterproof, his hood in some degree sheltering his face, a waterproof rug drawn high above his knees, was more comfortable than the boys. Bailey, indeed, had a seat to sit upon and a share of the rug, but his friends had neither seat nor shelter.

Perhaps, on the whole, they would have been better off had they been walking. The imperfect light and the hasty start rendered it difficult for them to have a clear view of their position. The mare--which, had it been lighter and they versed in horseflesh, they would have been able to recognise as a very tolerable specimen of an American trotter--made the pace so hot that they had to cling, if not to each other's hair, at least to whatever portion of each other's person they could manage to get hold of. Even then it was only by means of a series of gymnastic feats that they were able to keep their footing and save themselves from being pitched out on to the road.

They had not gone far when Griffin had a disaster.

"I've lost my hat!" he cried. Wind and pace and nervousness combined had loosened his headgear, and without staying to bid farewell to his head, it disappeared into the night.

The stranger gave utterance to a loud yet musical laugh.

"Never mind your hat! Can't stop for hats! The fresh air will do you good, cool your head, my boy!" But this was a point of view which did not occur to Griffin; he was rather disposed to wonder what Mr. Shane and Mrs. Fletcher would say.

"I wish you wouldn't catch hold of my throat; you'll strangle me,"

said Wheeler, as the vehicle dashed round a sharp turn in the road, and the hatless Griffin made a frantic clutch at his friend to save himself from following his hat.

"I--can't--help--it," gasped his friend in reply. "I wish he wouldn't go so fast. Oh--h!"

The stranger laughed again.

"Don't tumble out! we can't stop to pick up boys! Hullo! what are you up to there?"

The trio in the rear were apparently engaged in a fight for life. They were uttering choking e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, and struggling with each other in their desperate efforts to preserve their perpendicular. In the course of their struggle they lurched against the stranger with such unexpected violence that had he not with marvellous rapidity twisted round in his seat and caught them with his arm, they would in all probability have continued their journey on the road. At the same instant, with his disengaged hand he brought the horse, who seemed to obey the directions of its master's hand with mechanical accuracy, to a sudden halt.

"Now, then, are you all right?"

They were very far from being all right, but were not at that moment possessed of breath to tell him so. Had they not lost the power of speech they would have joined in a unanimous appeal to him to set them down, and let them go anywhere, and do anything, rather than allow them to continue any longer at the mercy of his too rapid steed. But the stranger seemed to take their involuntary silence for acquiescence. Once more they were dashing through the night, and again they were hanging on for their bare lives.

"Like driving, youngster?" The question was addressed to Bailey. "Like horses? Like a beast that can go? Mary Anne can give a lead to a flash of lightning and catch it in two T's."

"Mary Anne" was apparently the steed. At that moment the trio in the rear would have believed anything of Mary Anne's powers of speed, but Bailey held his peace. The stranger went on.

"I like a drive on a night like this. I like dashing through the wind and the darkness and the rain. I like a thing to fire my blood, and that's the reason why I like you. That's the reason why I've asked you home to tea. What's your name?"

"Bailey, sir."

"I knew a man named Bailey down in Kentucky who was hanged because he was too fond of horses--other people's, not his own. Any relation of yours?" Bertie disclaimed the soft impeachment.

"I don't think so, sir."

"There's no knowing. Lots of people are hanged without their own mothers knowing anything about it, let alone their fathers, especially out Kentucky way. A cousin of mine was hanged in Golden City, and I shouldn't have known anything about it to this day if I hadn't come along and seen his body swinging on a tree. As nice a fellow as man need know, six-feet-one-and-three-quarters in his stockings--three-quarters of an inch shorter than me. They explained to me that they'd hanged him by mistake, which was some consolation to me, anyway, though what he thought of it is more than I can say. I cut him down, dug a hole seven foot deep, and laid him there to sleep; and there he sleeps as sound as though he'd handed in his checks upon a feather bed."

Bailey looked up at the speaker. He was not quite sure if he was in earnest, and was anything but sure that the little narrative which he rolled so glibly off his tongue might not be the instant coinage of his brain. But something in the speaker's voice and manner attracted him even more than his words; something he would have found it difficult to describe.

"Is that true?" he asked.

The stranger looked down at him and laughed.

"Perhaps it is, and perhaps it isn't." He laughed again. "Wet, youngster?"

"I should rather think I am," was Bertie's grim response. All the stranger did was to laugh again. Bailey ventured on an inquiry. "Do you live far from here?" He was conscious of a certain degree of interest as to whether the stranger was driving them to Kentucky; he, too, had Mr. Shane and Mrs. Fletcher in his mind's eye. "Shane'll get sacked for this, as sure as fate," was his mental observation. He was aware that at Mecklemburg House the sins of the pupils not seldom fell upon the heads of the a.s.sistant-masters.

"Pain's Hill," was the answer to his question. "Ever heard of Washington Villa?" Bertie could not say he had.

"I am George Washington Bankes, the proprietor thereof. Yes, and it isn't so long ago that if any one had said to me that I should settle down as a country gentleman, I should have said, 'There have been liars since Ananias, but none quite as big as you.'"

Bailey eyed him from a corner of his eye. His father was a medical man, with no inconsiderable country practice. He had seen something of country gentlemen, but it occurred to him that a country gentleman in any way resembling his new acquaintance he had not yet chanced to see.

"You at the school there?"

Taking it for granted that he referred to Mecklemburg House, Bertie confessed that he was.

"Why don't you run away? I would."

Bertie started; he had read of boys running away from school in stories of the penny dreadful type, but he had not yet heard of country gentlemen suggesting that course of action as a reasonable one for the rising generation to pursue.

"Every boy worth his salt ought to run away. I did, and I've never done a more sensible thing to this day." In that case one could not but wonder for how many sensible things Mr. George Washington Bankes had been remarkable in the course of his career. "I've been from China to Peru, from the North Pole to the South. I've been round the world all sorts of ways; and the chances are that if I hadn't run away from school I should never have travelled twenty miles from my old mother's door. Why don't you run away?"

Bertie wriggled in his seat and gasped.

"I--I don't know," he said.

"Ah, I'll talk to you about that when I get you home. You're about the best plucked lad I've seen, or you wouldn't have stood up in the way you did to that great hulking lubber there; and rather than see a lad of parts wasting his time at school--but you wait a bit. I'll open your eyes, my lad. I'll give you some idea of what a man's life ought to be! Books never did me any good, and never will. I say, throw books, like physic, to the dogs--a life of adventure's the life for me!"

Bertie listened open-eyed and open-mouthed; he began to think he was in a waking dream. There was a wildness about his new acquaintance, and about his mode of speech, which filled him with a sort of dull, startled wonder. There was in the boy, deep-rooted somewhere, that half-unconscious longing for things adventurous which the British youngster always has. Mr. Bankes struck a chord which filled the boy almost with a sense of pain.

"A life of adventure's the life for me!" Mr. Bankes repeated his confession of faith, laughing as he did so; and the words, and the voice, and the manner, and the laugh, all mixed together, made the boy, wet as he was, glow with a sudden warmth. "A life of adventure's the life for me!"

The drive was nearly ended, and during the rest of it Mr. Bankes kept silence. Wheeler's hat had followed Griffin's, but he had not mentioned it; partly because, as he thought, he would receive no sympathy and not much attention, and partly because, in his anxiety to keep his footing in the trap, and get out of it with his bones whole, it would have been a matter of comparative indifference to him if the rest of his clothing had followed his hat. But he, too, mistily wondered what Mr. Shane and Mrs. Fletcher would say.

Fortunately for his peace of mind, and the peace of mind of his two friends, the good steed, Mary Anne, brought them safely to the doors of Washington Villa. Fond of driving as they were, as a rule, they were conscious of a distinct sense of relief when that drive was at an end.

Chapter V

AN EVENING AT WASHINGTON VILLA

Washington Villa appeared, from what one could see in the darkness, to be a fairly sized house, standing in its own grounds. Considerable stabling was built apart from, but close to the house, and as the trap dashed along the little carriage-drive numerous loud-voiced dogs announced the fact of an arrival to whomever it might concern. The instant the vehicle stopped, the hall door was opened, and a little wizened, shrunken man came down the steps. Mr. Bankes threw him the reins.

"Jump out, you boys, and tumble into the house. Welcome to Washington Villa." Suiting the action to the word, and before his young friends had clearly realized the fact of their having arrived at their destination, he had risen from his seat, sprung to the ground, and was standing on the threshold of the door. The boys were not long in following suit.

"Come this way!" Striding on in front of them, through a hall of no inconsiderable dimensions, he led them into a room in which a bright fire was blazing, and which was warm with light. A pretty servant girl made a simultaneous entrance through a door on the other side of the room. "Catch hold." Tearing rather than taking off his waterproof and hood, he flung them to the maid. "Where are my slippers?" The maid produced a pair from the fender, where they had been placed to warm; and Mr. Bankes thrust his feet into them, flinging his boots off on to the floor. "Tea for five, and a good tea, too, and in about less time than it would take me to shoot a snake."

The maid disappeared with a laugh on her face; she was apparently used to Mr. Bankes, and to Mr. Bankes' mode of speech. Then, after having attended to his own comfort, the host turned his attention to his guests.

"Well, you're a nice lot of half-drowned puppies. By right, I ought to hang you up in front of the kitchen fire to dry."