‘Will North, the gamekeeper, lives in the left-hand one. He’s a grand chap. I’ve been out with him several times already and always had good sport. The other one belongs to the Woottons, Abel and Harry. They garden for us and for the College. Deb likes gardening, fortunately, so for us they don’t do very much. They chop stuff down and burn it, and they tackle most of the digging. They work at the College mostly, but I was asked to let them stay on here at their cottage. They’re most steady, respectable chaps. Abel is a widower with one kid, a boy of twelve. Harry is a bachelor. They’ve a sister who keeps the lodge at the College gates, and they go up there for their dinner more times than not. The sister’s a dragon, but she has a keen sense of duty, sees that her brothers toe the line and don’t spend their money at the pub, and she mends the kid’s clothes and makes him go to church and get to school early and that sort of thing, you know. I really hardly see what they’d do without her.’

‘Who looks after Will North?’ Mrs Bradley enquired.

‘Oh, Will? He’s self-sufficient. Cooks and cleans, and is all kinds of a handyman. He gets food from our cook when he wants it, but he’s remarkably independent, and a wonder with a gun or with snares. The last owner used to rear pheasants, but I don’t know what happens now. Will finds me one or two to pop at, but the woods are no longer preserved. You can’t get the food for the birds.’

‘I think I shall like Will North.’

‘I’m sure you will. He’s a bachelor, sensible bloke! – and cares for nothing much except his dog and his ferrets. He’s got what he calls his Dogs’ Cemetery behind those bushes you saw by the drive. Properly dug, deep graves, headboards, last messages and all. If he takes a fancy to you you’ll be shown it, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

The drive curved in almost a semi-circle, and Mrs Bradley had her first sight of the house which her nephew had purchased.

It was of stone, and had the high gables and beautiful greyness of all early Cotswold manors. It had been built in 1560, but was simply designed and had the bareness and austerity of even earlier days.

Its tiles were of stone, too, and had weathered to a mellowness which was absent from the stark walls and the Tudor drip-stones above the windows. A broad archway led to the stables, and there was a large dovecot, almost the size of a cottage, at the side of the house. There was a row of plain stone shields cut just above the square-headed Tudor doorway, and beneath them was the lovely Deborah Bradley, waiting to welcome home the travellers.