special warning, to which we
look forward with no anticipations of peculiar joy or sorrow,
from which beforehand we neither demand nor expect more than
the ordinary portion of good and evil, and which yet through
some occurrence--unconsidered perhaps at the moment, but
gaining in significance with years and connecting events--are
destined to live apart in our memories to the end of our
existence. Such a day in Horace Graham's life was a certain
hot Sunday in August, that he spent at the big hotel at
Chaudfontaine.

Every traveller along the great high road leading from
Brussels to Cologne knows Chaudfontaine, the little village
distant about six miles from Liege, with its church, its big
hotel, and its scattered cottages, partly forges, partly
restaurants, which shine white against a dark green background
of wooded hills, and gleam reflected in the clear tranquil
stream by which they stand. On every side the hills seem to
fold over and enclose the quiet green valley; the stream winds
and turns, the long poplar-bordered road follows its course;
amongst the hills are more valleys, more streams, woods,
forests, sheltered nooks, tall grey limestone rocks, spaces of
cornfields, and bright meadows. Everyone admires the charming
scenery as the train speeds across it, through one tunnel
after another; but there are few amongst our countrymen who
care to give it more than a passing glance of admiration, or
to tarry in the quiet little village even for an hour, in
their great annual rush to Spa, or the Rhine, or Switzerland.
As a rule one seldom meets Englishmen at Chaudfontaine, and it
was quite by chance that Horace Graham found himself there. An
accident to a goods train had caused a detention of several
hours all along the line, as he was travelling to Brussels,
and it was by the advice of a Belgian fellow-passenger that he
had stopped at Chaudfontaine, instead of going on to Liege, as
he had at first proposed doing, on hearing from the guard that
it was the furthest point that could be reached that night.

Behind the hotel lies a sunshiny shady garden, with benches
and tables set under the trees near the house, and beyond, an
unkempt lawn, a sort of wilderness of grass and shrubs and
trees, with clumps of dark and light foliage against the more
uniform green of the surrounding hills, and it was still cool
and pleasant when Graham wandered into it after breakfast on
that Sunday morning, whilst all in front of the hotel