The woman’s mocking voice from the lake added to my perplexity. It was not, I reflected, such a voice as one might expect to hear from a country girl; nor could I imagine any errand that would excuse a woman’s presence abroad on an October night whose cool air inspired first confidences with fire and lamp. There was something haunting in that last cry across the water; it kept repeating itself over and over in my ears. It was a voice of quality, of breeding and charm.

“Good night, merry gentlemen!”

In Indiana, I reflected, rustics, young or old, men or women, were probably not greatly given to salutations of just this temper.

Bates now appeared.

“Beg pardon, sir; but your room’s ready whenever you wish to retire.”

I looked about in search of a clock.

“There are no timepieces in the house, Mr. Glenarm. Your grandfather was quite opposed to them. He had a theory, sir, that they were conducive, as he said, to idleness. He considered that a man should work by his conscience, sir, and not by the clock,—the one being more exacting than the other.”

I smiled as I drew out my watch,—as much at Bate’ solemn tones and grim lean visage as at his quotation from my grandsire. But the fellow puzzled and annoyed me. His unobtrusive black clothes, his smoothly-brushed hair, his shaven face, awakened an antagonism in me.

“Bates, if you didn’t fire that shot through the window, who did—will you answer me that?”

“Yes, sir; if I didn’t do it, it’s quite a large question who did. I’ll grant you that, sir.”

I stared at him. He met my gaze directly without flinching; nor was there anything insolent in his tone or attitude. He continued:

“I didn’t do it, sir. I was in the pantry when I heard the crash in the refectory window. The bullet came from out of doors, as I should judge, sir.”

The facts and conclusions were undoubtedly with Bates, and I felt that I had not acquitted myself creditably in my effort to fix the crime on him. My abuse of him had been tactless, to say the least, and I now tried another line of attack.

“Of course, Bates, I was merely joking. What’s your own theory of the matter?”

“I have no theory, sir. Mr. Glenarm always warned me against theories. He said—if you will pardon me—there was great danger in the speculative mind.”

The man spoke with a slight Irish accent, which in itself puzzled me. I have always been attentive to the peculiarities of speech, and his was not the brogue of the Irish servant class. Larry Donovan, who was English-born, used on occasions an exaggerated Irish dialect that was wholly different from the smooth liquid tones of Bates. But more things than his speech were to puzzle me in this man.