ng of
river water.

"It is a long time since we bathed in Sandford Lasher," said Durrance.

"Or froze in the Easter vacations in the big snow-gully on Great End,"
returned Feversham. Both men had the feeling that on this morning a
volume in their book of life was ended; and since the volume had been a
pleasant one to read, and they did not know whether its successors would
sustain its promise, they were looking backward through the leaves
before they put it finally away.

"You must stay with us, Jack, when you come back," said Feversham.

Durrance had schooled himself not to wince, and he did not, even at that
anticipatory "us." If his left hand tightened upon the thongs of his
reins, the sign could not be detected by his friend.

"If I come back," said Durrance. "You know my creed. I could never pity
a man who died on active service. I would very much like to come by that
end myself."

It was a quite simple creed, consistent with the simplicity of the man
who uttered it. It amounted to no more than this: that to die decently
was worth a good many years of life. So that he uttered it without
melancholy or any sign of foreboding. Even so, however, he had a fear
that perhaps his friend might place another interpretation upon the
words, and he looked quickly into his face. He only saw again, however,
that puzzling look of envy in Feversham's eyes.

"You see there are worse things which can happen," he continued;
"disablement, for instance. Clever men could make a shift, perhaps, to
put up with it. But what in the world should I do if I had to sit in a
chair all my days? It makes me shiver to think of it," and he shook his
broad shoulders to unsaddle that fear. "Well, this is the last ride. Let
us gallop," and he let out his horse.

Feversham followed his example, and side by side they went racing down
the sand. At the bottom of the Row they stopped, shook hands, and with
the curtest of nods parted. Feversham rode out of the park, Durrance
turned back and walked his horse up toward the seats beneath the trees.

Even as a boy in his home at Southpool in Devonshire, upon a wooded
creek of the Salcombe estuary, he had always been conscious of a certain
restlessness, a desire to sail down that creek and out over the levels
of the sea, a dream of queer outlandish countries and peoples beyond the
dark familiar woods. And the restlessness had grown upon him, so that
"Guessens," even when he had inherited it with its farm