ore to
handle, and sighed.

"Well, shake hands, Duggy, old boy. You carried this thing through
splendidly to-day. But it seems to have taken it out of me--which isn't
fair. I shall go for a little walk. Tell your mother I shall be back in
an hour or so."

The son took his father's hand. The strong young grasp brought a
momentary sense of comfort to the older man. They eyed each other, both
pale, both conscious of feelings to which it was easier to give no
voice. Then their hands dropped. Sir Arthur looked for his hat and
stick, which were lying near, and went out of the open glass door into
the garden. He passed through the garden into the park beyond walking
slowly and heavily, his son's eyes following him.

CHAPTER XIV

Out of sight of the house, at the entrance of the walk leading to the
moor, Sir Arthur was conscious again of transitory, but rather sharp
pains across the chest.

He sat down to rest, and they soon passed away. After a few minutes he
pursued his walk, climbing towards the open stretches of heathery moor,
which lay beyond the park, and a certain ghyll or hollow with a wild
stream in it that cleft the moor high up--one of his favourite haunts.

He climbed through ferny paths, and amid stretches of heather just
coming to its purple prime, up towards the higher regions of the moor
where the millstone grit cropped out in sharp edges, showing gaunt and
dark against the afternoon sky. Here the beautiful stream that made a
waterfall within the park came sliding down shelf after shelf of
yellowish rock, with pools of deep brown water at intervals, overhung
with mountain ash and birch.

After the warm day, all the evening scents were abroad, carried by a
gentle wind. Sir Arthur drank them in, with the sensuous pleasure which
had been one of his gifts in life. The honey smell of the heather, the
woody smell of the bracken, the faint fragrance of wood-smoke wafted
from a bonfire in the valley below--they all carried with them an
inexpressible magic for the man wandering on the moor. So did the
movements of birds--the rise of a couple of startled grouse, the
hovering of two kestrels, a flight of wild duck in the distance. Each
and all reminded him of the halcyon times of life--adventures of his
boyhood, the sporting pleasures of his manhood. By George!--how he had
enjoyed them all!

Presently, to his left, on the edge of the heathery slope he caught
sight of one of the butts used in the great grouse