“This will worry our little Olwen!” he thought in dismay. “They’ll send her to bed for a certainty. They’ll think we’re not coming at all. They’ll think we’ve changed our minds. And where shall we get supper when we are there? Damn these teasing problems! I wish Mother had waited till tomorrow.”

The station was not a very pleasant place to spend an hour in; so Wolf mounted the hill which rose behind the parallel tracks of the railroad and the river. Here there was a sort of terrace-road, perched high above the town and itself overshadowed by the grassy eminence known as “The Slopes,” beyond the summit of which lay the wide-stretching deer-park of the lord of the manor.