tionately savage.

"I am surprised, Mr Musgrave," he said, speaking more quickly, "at a
man of your age asking such a question. Surely you should know that
there is a common-sense medium in all things."

"Still I should prefer to know exactly what restrictions the Service
places upon our movements. Do you mean, sir, that we are never to pass
the night at the house of a country friend without formal leave of
absence?"

"No, no. I don't mean to lay down quite such a hard and fast rule," was
the more yielding reply, for this deft plurality imported into the
pronoun was disconcerting. "What I would dwell upon, however, is the
strong desirability of returning to the town to sleep, unless detained
by unforeseen circumstances, such as stress of weather, or anything else
which is absolutely unavoidable."

"I shall remember your wishes in the matter, sir," said Roden, in his
habitual tone of studied and ceremonious politeness, which was the best
commentary on the state of relations existing between himself and his
new superior.

But although there was a show of reason in the other's objection, the
real ugly motive was manifest--viz., petty annoyance, and the thought of
how, at his time of life, his means of existence, or at any rate of that
which made existence tolerable, should be dependent on his capacity for
eating dirt at the hands of such a mean-minded snob as this Shaston, was
bitter and galling to the last degree. The thing was getting past a
joke, past all bearing, in fact. Should he endeavour to arrange a
transfer? Mr Van Stolz might be able to help him in this. But then he
hated to ask anything of anybody: besides, he did not choose to allow
himself to be driven out of the place; to yield the ground; to own
himself beaten. And then there was Mona.

Mona, the bright beacon star that had arisen upon the grey blankness of
his latter-day life. Mona, whose sweet, entrancing spells had woven
around the hard granite of his cynical and desolate heart a glittering
network of golden sun-rays. Mona, whose secret lore had welled forth
warm in its dazzling wares what time he hung helpless over the yawning
jaws of death, and the power of whose marvellous love triumphing over
the material forces of Nature itself, had again availed to save him.
How could he, of his own act, think of leaving her, of going where day
after day, week after week, even month after month, nothing would remain
of her but a memory? Better en