ed utterly
insignificant, almost like a toy behind the four big bays harnessed two
and two. We three, counting the coachman, filled it completely. He was
a young fellow with clear blue eyes; the high collar of his livery fur
coat framed his cheery countenance and stood all round level with the
top of his head.

"Now, Joseph," my companion addressed him, "do you think we shall manage
to get home before six?" His answer was that we would surely, with
God's help, and providing there were no heavy drifts in the long stretch
between certain villages whose names came with an extremely familiar
sound to my ears. He turned out an excellent coachman, with an instinct
for keeping the road among the snow-covered fields and a natural gift of
getting the best out of his horses.

"He is the son of that Joseph that I suppose the Captain remembers.
He who used to drive the Captain's late grandmother of holy memory,"
remarked V. S., busy tucking fur rugs about my feet.

I remembered perfectly the trusty Joseph who used to drive my
grandmother. Why! he it was who let me hold the reins for the first
time in my life and allowed me to play with the great four-in-hand whip
outside the doors of the coach-house.

"What became of him?" I asked. "He is no longer serving, I suppose."

"He served our master," was the reply. "But he died of cholera ten years
ago now--that great epidemic that we had. And his wife died at the same
time--the whole houseful of them, and this is the only boy that was
left."

The MS. of "Almayer's Folly" was reposing in the bag under our feet.

I saw again the sun setting on the plains as I saw it in the travels of
my childhood. It set, clear and red, dipping into the snow in full view
as if it were setting on the sea. It was twenty-three years since I had
seen the sun set over that land; and we drove on in the darkness which
fell swiftly upon the livid expanse of snows till, out of the waste of a
white earth joining a bestarred sky, surged up black shapes, the clumps
of trees about a village of the Ukrainian plain. A cottage or two glided
by, a low interminable wall, and then, glimmering and winking through a
screen of fir-trees, the lights of the master's house.

That very evening the wandering MS. of "Almayer's Folly" was unpacked
and unostentatiously laid on the writing-table in my room, the
guest-room which had been, I was informed in an affectionately careless
tone, awaiting me for some fifteen years or so