thinkable--though perturbing. But all this talk
of steamers and outfits startlingly illumined the fact that in October
he was actually going--to the other end of the earth.

* * * * *

With Dyan's departure, realisation pounced upon his heart and brain.
Vaguely, and quite unjustly, he felt as if his cousin were in some way
to blame; and for the moment, he was not sorry to be rid of him.
Partings over, he went off for a lone prowl--hatless, as usual--to quiet
his jangling sensations and tell that inner, irresolute Roy not to be a
treble-distilled fool....

Nothing like the open moor to clear away cobwebs. The sweeps of heady
colour and blue distances could be trusted to revive the winged impulse
that lured him irresistibly away from the tangible and assured. Is there
no hidden link--he wondered--between the wander-instinct of the
home-loving Scot and the vast spaces of moor and sky that lie about him
in his infancy...?

But first he must traverse the enchanted green gloom of his beech-wood,
memory-haunted at every turn. Under his favourite tree, a wooden cross,
carved by Tara and himself, marked the grave of Prince, dead these three
years of sheer old age. And at sight of it there sprang to memory that
unforgotten day of May,--the fight with Joe; Tara's bracelet, still
treasured in his letter-case, even as Tara treasured the "broidered
bodice," in a lavender-scented sachet, set apart from mere blouses and
scarves....

And again that troublesome voice within urged--"What an utter fool you
are--running away from them all."

To him had fallen the privilege of knowing family life at its best--the
finest and happiest on earth; and he could not escape the price
exacted, when the call comes to act and decide and suffer alone.
Associations that grow up with us are more or less taken for granted
while their roots lie deep in the heart. Only when the threat of parting
disturbs the delicate fibres, their depth and tenacity are revealed. And
so it was with Roy. Hurrying through his wood of knightly adventures he
felt besieged, in spirit, by the many loves that had hitherto simply
been a part of his life; yet to-day pressed urgently, individually, upon
his consciousness, his heart....

And over against them was the counter-pull of deep ancestral stirrings;
large vague forces of the outer world; the sense of ferment everywhere;
of storm-clouds on the greater horizon, big with dramas that might r