th peculiar accuracy, but his narration had
that night of itself its own individual quality. His was no ordinary
personality, or, at any rate, the especial circumstances of the time
drove it into no ordinary shape, and I believe that never before in
all his days had he spoken freely and eagerly to any one. It was
simply to-night his exultation and happiness that impelled him,
perhaps also some sense of high adventure that his romantic character
would, most inevitably, extract from our expedition and its purposes.

At any rate, I listened, saying a word now and then, whilst the hour
grew dark, lit only by the stars, then trembled into a pale dawn
overladen with grey dense clouds, which again broke, rolled away,
before another shining, glittering morning. I remember that it was
broad daylight when we, at last, left the corridor.

"I'm thirty-three," he said. "I don't feel it, of course; I seem to be
now only just beginning life. I'm a very unpractical person and in
that way, perhaps, I'm younger than my age."

I remember that I said something to him about his, most certainly,
appearing younger.

"Most certainly I do. I'm just the same as when I went up to Cambridge
and I was then as when I first went to Rugby. Nothing seems to have
had any effect upon me--except, perhaps, these last two days. Do you
know Glebeshire?" he asked me abruptly.

I said that I had spent one summer there with a reading party.

"Ah," he answered, smiling, "I can tell, by the way you say that, that
you don't really know it at all. To us Glebeshire people it's
impossible to speak of it so easily. There are Trenchards all over
Glebeshire, you know, lots of them. In Polchester, our cathedral town,
where I was born, there are at least four Trenchard families. Then in
Truxe, at Garth, at Rasselas, at Clinton--but why should I bother you
with all this? It's only to tell you that the Trenchards are simply
Glebeshire for ever and ever. To a Trenchard, anywhere in the world,
Glebeshire is hearth and home."

"I believe I've met," I said, "your Trenchards of Garth. George
Trenchard.... She was a Faunder. They have a house in Westminster.
There's a charming Miss Trenchard with whom I danced."

"Yes, those are the George Trenchards," he answered with eagerness and
delight, as though I had formed a new link with him. "Fancy your
knowing them! How small the world is! My father was a cousin, a first
cousin, of George Trenchard's. The girl--you must mean M