he fiercely. 'I wash my hands of it altogether! I'm
heartily glad I told him so before he went.' He smoked on very vigorously
for half an hour, the burden of his thoughts being perhaps revealed by
the summing-up, as he said, 'And when you are "in for it," Master Cecil,
and some precious scrape it will be, if I move hand or foot to pull you
through it, call me a Major of Marines, that's all--just call me a Major of
Marines!' The ineffable horror of such an imputation served as matter for
reverie for hours.

CHAPTER IX

A DRIVE THROUGH A BOG

While Lockwood continued thus to doubt and debate with himself, Walpole was
already some miles on his way to Kilgobbin. Not, indeed, that he had made
any remarkable progress, for the 'mare that was to rowle his honour over in
an hour and a quarter,' had to be taken from the field where she had been
ploughing since daybreak, while 'the boy' that should drive her, was a
little old man who had to be aroused from a condition of drunkenness in a
hayloft, and installed in his office.

Nor were these the only difficulties. The roads that led through the bog
were so numerous and so completely alike that it only needed the dense
atmosphere of a rainy day to make it matter of great difficulty to discover
the right track. More than once were they obliged to retrace their steps
after a considerable distance, and the driver's impatience always took the
shape of a reproach to Walpole, who, having nothing else to do, should
surely have minded where they were going. Now, not only was the traveller
utterly ignorant of the geography of the land he journeyed in, but his
thoughts were far and away from the scenes around him. Very scattered
and desultory thoughts were they, at one time over the Alps and with
'long-agoes': nights at Rome clashing with mornings on the Campagna; vast
salons crowded with people of many nations, all more or less busy with that
great traffic which, whether it take the form of religion, or politics, or
social intrigue, hate, love, or rivalry, makes up what we call 'the world';
or there were sunsets dying away rapidly--as they will do--over that great
plain outside the city, whereon solitude and silence are as much masters as
on a vast prairie of the West; and he thought of times when he rode back at
nightfall beside Nina Kostalergi, when little flashes would cross them of
that romance that very worldly folk now and then taste of, and delight in,
with a zest all the g