y in the air, and over the grey winter landscape the
finest possible powder of snow lay pale under the furtive sun. As the
forest edges closed about him and the Duke with still no idea of where
he was going, continued to tramp, he unconsciously entered the property
Bulstrode had lately acquired, and which he had begged his friend to
avoid.

There was something in the country air, in its pungent sweetness, and
in the season, that penetrated even Westboro's melancholy, and every
now and then he lifted his head to breathe in deeply the fragrance of
hemlock and the cold earthy aroma, the spice of bracken and the balm of
a fragrant thicket that smelled like a rose. It was winter, however,
and although a snow bird piped in it and the sun was out, there was a
December quality that, in the mood he was in, overcame all the
festivities of the time. He heard the bird who was persistent and
sharp-voiced, and, for the first time thinking of the other game he had
come out for, he paused. His dogs were gone, the beggars! He called
them to no purpose, whistled and waited. They were a new brace and
young. God knew where they had cut away to.

Before him, as he stood, the brown vistas of the winter forest opened
out here and there into ochre circles and filled at this hour with
brilliant sunlight, their round openings overflowing; the light
filtered gently out and was swallowed up by the cold and closer wood.
Under his feet there was only the faint ghost of the late snowfall on
the turned-up, curled-up edges of the dry leaves. There beeches, red
as copper, and iron-strong oaks struck their roots deep down into the
mould. Westboro' did not know where he had wandered to, but here and
there through the bare trees gleamed the white of a statue on its mossy
base, and a little farther along, a broken pedestal held its slender
column up amongst the tree trunks as mossy and veined as they, and
right in the heart of the bowl, on a brick pedestal was a sundial, a
round brass disc, cut into with the tooth of time, and all black and
green. The sun at this moment shone full on it and its slight shadow
fell along the noon. The Duke stooped down and through the glass read
the inscription:

_Utere dum licet_.

"I'm a trespasser," he thought. "This is Bulstrode's property."

Through an opening just to the right he could see a brown path, and at
the end of it a gate.

"What the deuce could Jimmy have so wanted this old place for? What