me that night Val grudgingly considered those
words. As a sane, sensible man, he must of course rejoice that his work
had brought him so good a reward, yet there was something in the wording
of that sentence which chafed an old sore. _Safe_! That was the sting.
A man of thirty years, and--_safe_! Secured from anxiety, lapped round
with comforts--nothing to do now but keep steadily along the beaten rut.
Eight-fifty Tube in the morning; six o'clock Tube at night; two-thirty
Tube on Saturday afternoons, always the same black-coated, tall-hatted
figure growing, with the passage of years, a thought heavier, a thought
wider, but always sleek, always composed--always _safe_!

Val Lessing reviewed the prospect, and once again, more wildly than
ever, his vagrant heart cried out in protest. Oh! it had been a
different life to which he had looked forward in the days that were
gone--the mad, glad, foolhardy days when all he had asked of fate was a
passage through that highway of adventure, where a thrill lay behind
every bush, and a danger at every turn.

Danger--danger--the very word brought exhilaration; the ring of it, the
thrill of it, the wild, sweet savour which it bore! Oh, to be out on
the highway, away from the treadmill of City life; oh, to wake in the
morning, to pull aside a flapping canvas, inhale the clean air blowing
over great plains, and across frowning ridges of mountains, to step
forth on the day's quest, sure of nothing, nothing in all the world, but
of danger to overcome!

Val Lessing's home was represented by a bachelor flat, presided over by
a respectable middle-aged couple. The mother for whose sake he had
resigned himself to a business career had died some years before, but he
was still responsible for a young brother and sister, and obliged to
make a home for them during holiday seasons. The noisy incursion was
not always welcome, all the same the flat became a very dreary place
when the lively pair had taken themselves schoolwards once more, and a
solitary dinner was a thing to be avoided.

Lessing, as a bachelor, had grown into the habit of taking the evening
meal in town, and had discovered a certain very Bohemian restaurant
where most excellent cooking was supplied to as odd a looking company as
ever assembled within four walls. He found a never-ending interest in
watching his fellow diners and pondering over the secrets of their
existence. It was at least safe to conclude that they did no