mwell's service
and the King's, and entrusted with high secrets the issue of which both
temporal and eternal it was hard to predict. And, no doubt, the knight
thought, in time he would come back and pick up the strands he had
dropped; for when a man had wife and children of his own to care for,
other businesses must seem secondary; and questions that could be
ignored before must be faced then.

But he thought with a little anxiety of his wife, and wondered whether
his elder son had not after all inherited that kind of dry rot of the
soul, in which the sap and vigour disappear little by little, leaving
the shape indeed intact but not the powers. When he had married her,
thirty-five years before, she had seemed to him an incarnate mystery of
whose key he was taking possession--her silence had seemed pregnant with
knowledge, and her words precious pieces from an immeasurable treasury;
and then little by little he had found that the wide treasury was empty,
clean indeed and capacious, but no more, and above all with no promise
of any riches as yet unperceived. Those great black eyes, that high
forehead, those stately movements, meant nothing; it was a splendid
figure with no soul within. She did her duty admirably, she said her
prayers, she entertained her guests with the proper conversation, she
could be trusted to behave well in any circumstances that called for
tact or strength; and that was all. But Ralph would not be like that; he
was intensely devoted to his work, and from all accounts able in its
performance; and more than that, with all his impassivity he was capable
of passion; for his employer Sir Thomas Cromwell was to Ralph's eyes,
his father had begun to see, something almost more than human. A word
against that master of his would set his eyes blazing and his voice
trembling; and this showed that at least the soul was not more than
sleeping, or its powers more than misdirected.

And meanwhile there was Chris; and at the thought the father lifted his
eyes to the gallery, and saw the faint outline of his son's brown head
against the whitewash.

CHAPTER II

A FORETASTE OF PEACE

It was not until the party was riding home the next day that Sir
Nicholas Maxwell and his wife were informed of Chris' decision.

* * * * *

They had had a fair day's sport in the two estates that marched with one
another between Overfield and Great Keynes, and about fifteen stags had
been k