nour
held him on English soil, for which reason he went to Camylott to spend
the last weeks with those he loved, amid the country loveliness.

When my lord Marquess journeyed to the country he took no great
cavalcade with him, but only a couple of servants to attend him, while
Mr. Fox rode at his side. The English June weather was heavenly fair,
and the country a bower of green, the sun shining with soft warmth and
the birds singing in the hedgerows and upon the leafy boughs. To ride a
fine horse over country roads, by wood and moor and sea, is a pleasant
thing when a man is young and hale and full of joy in Nature's
loveliness, and above all is riding to a home which seems more
beautiful to him than any place on earth. One who has lived
twenty-eight years, having no desire unfulfilled, and taking his part
of every pleasure that wealth, high birth, and a splendid body can give
him, may well ride gaily over a good white road and have leisure to
throw back his head to hearken to a skylark soaring in the high blue
heavens above him, to smile at a sitting bird's bright eyes peeping
timidly at him from under the thick leafage of a hazel hedge, or at the
sight of a family of rabbits scurrying over the cropped woodland grass
at the sound of his horse's feet, their short white tails marking their
leaps as they dart from one fern shelter to the other; and to slacken
his horse's pace as he rides past village greens, marking how the
little children tumble and are merry there.

So my lord Marquess rode and Mr. Fox with him, for two days at least.
In the dewy morning they set forth and travelled between green
hedgerows and through pretty tiny villages, talking pleasantly, as old
friends will talk, for to the day of his old preceptor's peaceful dying
years later at Camylott, the Marquess (who was then a Duke) loved and
treated him as a companion and friend, not as a poor underling Chaplain
who must rise from table as if dismissed by the course of sweetmeats
when it appeared. For refreshments they drew rein at noon before some
roadside inn whose eager host spread before them his very best, and
himself waited upon them in awful joy. When the sun set, one manservant
rode on before to prepare for their entertainment for the night, and
when they cantered up to the hostelry, they found the whole
establishment waiting to receive and do them honour, landlord and
landlady bowing and curtseying on the threshold, maidservants peeping
from beh