Read "The Skeleton Key" by Bernard Capes online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
(_From the Bickerdike MS._)
We were three guns -- Hugo, myself, and a young local landowner, Sir Francis Orsden, of Audley, whom I had met before and liked. He was a good fellow, though considered effeminate by a sporting squirearchy; but that I could never see. Our shooting lay over the lower estate, from which the harvest had lately been carried, and we went out by the main gates, meeting the head gamekeeper, Hanson, with the dogs and a couple of boy beaters, in the road. Our plan was to work the stubble as far as possible in a south-westerly direction, making for Asholt Copse and Hanson's cottage, where Audrey and the Baron were to meet us, driving over in a pony trap with the lunch.