always dwelt on
them without dislike. They were gilded in his memory by the rays of
his new friendship.

And yet that this young Jack Smith (to keep for him the nondescript
name he had for unknown reasons chosen to assume) should be the first
man to awaken in the misanthropic Adrian the charm of human
intercourse, was singular indeed; one who followed from choice the
odious trade of legally chartered corsair, who was ever ready to
barter the chance of life and limb against what fortune might bring in
his path, to sacrifice human life to secure his own end of enrichment.

Well, the springs of friendship are to be no more discerned than
those of love; there was none of high or low degree, with the
exception of Rene, whose appearance at any time was so welcome to the
recluse upon his rock, as that of the privateersman.

And so, turning to his friend in to-night's softened mood, Sir Adrian
thought gratefully that to him it was that he owed deliverance from
the slavery of the King's service, that it was Jack Smith who had made
it possible for Adrian Landale to live to this great day and await its
coming in peace.

The old clock struck two; and Jem shivered on the rug as the
light-keeper rose at length from the table and sank in his arm-chair
once more.

Visions of the past had been ever his companions; now for the first
time came visions of the future to commingle with them. As if caught
up in the tide of his visitor's bright young life, it seemed as though
he were passing at length out of the valley of the shadow of death.

* * * * *

Rene, coming with noiseless bare feet, in the angry yellow dawn of the
second day of the storm, to keep an eye on his master's comfort, found
him sleeping in his chair with a new look of rest upon his face and a
smile upon his lips.

CHAPTER IX

A GENEALOGICAL EPISTLE

... and braided thereupon
All the devices blazoned on the shield,
In their own tinct, and added, of her wit,
A border fantasy of branch and flower.

_Idylls of the King._

Pulwick Priory, the ancestral home of the Cumbrian Landales, a
dignified if not overpoweringly lordly mansion, rises almost on the
ridge of the green slope which connects the high land with the sandy
strand of Morecambe; overlooking to the west the great brown breezy
bight, whilst on all other sides it is sheltered by its wooded park.

Whe