of the kind the figures will not
come right. How did he know that he had not met this girl for some
unknown purpose. He could see a great white star through a vista in the
trees, and he said: "I believe that that star knows. Why will it not
tell me?"

And then he walked into the woods, and out under the moon, between the
little grey fields. Some sheep had come out on the road and were lying
upon it. "I suppose it's all very natural," he said. "The circus
aspiring to the academy and the academy spying to the circus. Now, what
am I going to do to-morrow? I suppose I must go to see her."

He had visited all the ruins and pondered by all the cromlechs, and was
a little weary of historic remains; the girl was too much in his mind
to permit of his doing much writing. He might go to Dublin, where he
had business, and in the morning he looked out the trains, but none
seemed to suit his convenience, and at five o'clock he was at Laurel
Hill listening to Ellen. She was anxious to talk to him about the
political opportunity he could seize if he were so minded.

"Men have always believed in fate," Ned said, and, interrupting him
suddenly she asked him if he would come to see a pretty house in the
neighbourhood--a house that would suit him perfectly, for he must have
a house if he intended to go in for politics.

They came back in the dusk, talking of painting and papering and the
laying out of the garden. Ellen was anxious that the garden should be
nice, and he had been much interested in the old family furniture at
Laurel Hill, not with the spindle-legged Sheraton sideboard, but with
the big Victorian furniture which the Cronins thought ugly. He liked
especially the black mahogany sideboard in the dining-room, and he was
enthusiastic about the four-post bed that Mr. Cronin had slept in for
thirty years without ever thinking it was a beautiful thing. This
massive furniture represented a life that Ned perceived for the first
time, a sedate monotonous life; and he could see these people
accomplishing the same tasks from daylight to dark; he admired the
well-defined circle of their interests and the calm security with which
they spoke of the same things every evening, deepening the tradition of
their country and of their own characters; and he conceived a sudden
passion for tradition, and felt he would like to settle down in these
grass lands in an eighteenth-century house, living always amid heavy
mahogany furniture, sleeping ev