He had been uneasy during all
our journey from town, and I had observed that he had turned
over the morning papers with anxious attention, but now this
sudden realization of his worst fears left him in a blank melan-
choly. He leaned back in his seat, lost in gloomy speculation.
Yet there was much around to interest us, for we were passing
through as singular a countryside as any in England, where a few
scattered cottages represented the populatlon of to-day, while on
every hand enormous square-towered churches bristled up from
the flat green landscape and told of the glory and prosperity of
old East Anglia. At last the violet rim of the German Ocean
appeared over the green edge of the Norfolk coast, and the driver
pointed with his whip to two old brick and timber gables which
projected from a grove of trees. "That's Riding Thorpe Manor,"
said he.
As we drove up to the porticoed front door, I observed in front
of it, beside the tennis lawn, the black tool-house and the
pedestalled sundial with which we had such strange associations.
A dapper little man, with a quick, alert manner and a waxed
moustache, had just descended from a high dog-cart.
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