a pick in his
hands, making a new road in a new country, or in driving a path through
some primeval wood. There would have been liberty in either occupation:
he could have flung down the pick at any moment and taken up the
hunter's gun: he could have turned right or left at his own will in the
unexplored forest. But there at the bank it was just doing the same
thing over and over again: what he had done last week he would do again
this week: what had happened last year would happen again this year. It
was all pure, unadulterated, dismal monotony.

Like most things, it had come about without design: he had just drifted
into it. His father and mother had both died when he was a boy; he had
inherited a small property which brought in precisely one hundred and
fifty pounds a year: it was tied up to him in such a fashion that he
would have his three pounds a week as long as ever he lived. But as his
guardian, Mr. John Horbury, the manager of Chestermarke's Bank at
Scarnham, pointed out to him when he left school, he needed more than
three pounds a week if he wished to live comfortably and like a
gentleman. Still, a hundred and fifty a year of sure and settled income
was a fine thing, an uncommonly fine thing--all that was necessary was
to supplement it. Therefore--a nice, quiet, genteel profession--banking,
to wit. Light work, an honourable calling, an eminently respectable one.
In a few years he would have another hundred and fifty a year: a few
years more, and he would be a manager, with at least six hundred: he
might, well before he was a middle-aged man, be commanding a salary of a
thousand a year. Banking, by all means, counselled Mr. Horbury--and
offered him a vacancy which had just then arisen at Chestermarke's. And
Neale, willing to be guided by a man for whom he had much respect, took
the post, and settled down in the old bank in the quiet, sleepy
market-town, wherein one day was precisely like another day--and every
year his dislike for his work increased, and sometimes grew unbearably
keen, especially when spring skies and spring air set up a sudden
stirring in his blood. On this Monday morning that stirring amounted to
something very like a physical ache.

"Hang the old bank!" he muttered. "I'd rather be a ploughman!"

Nevertheless, the bank must be attended, and, at ten minutes to nine,
Neale lighted a cigarette, put on his hat, and strolled slowly across
the Market-Place. Although he knew every single one of