o and will
_not_ be still."

'Twas deep autumn and a day of gold--the sunset burned and flamed and
piled the sky with golden mountains such as had heaped upon each other
on the evening he had stood with his mother at the Long Gallery window
before their last parting; the trees' branches were orange and amber
and russet brown, the moors had gold hues on them, and on the terraces
the late flowers blooming blazed crimson and yellow as if the summer
had burned all paler and less sumptuous colour away. The gables and
turrets of the tower rose clear soft grey, or dark with ivy, against a
sky of deepest blue, the broad tree-studded acres of the park rolled
yellowing green to Camylott village, where white cottages nestled among
orchards and fields of corn and were enfolded by wooded hills and
rising moorland. Occasional farm-yard sounds were to be heard mingled
now and then with voices and laughter of children, rooks cawed in the
high tree-tops with a lazy irregularity, and there was an autumn
freshness in the ambient air. In the courtyard the fountain played with
a soft plashing, and as he rode in some little birds were chirping and
fluttering as they drank and flirted the water with their wings. The
wide doors were thrown open, showing the beauteous huge hall with its
pictures and warm colours, its armour and trophies of the chase; the
servants stood waiting to receive him, and as the groom took his horse,
Mr. Fox approached to greet him on the threshold. Every face had kindly
welcome in it, every object seemed to recall some memory which
belonged to his happiest youth--to those years when all had been so
warm and fair.

"Yes," he said later, as he stood at the window in the Long Gallery and
looked forth. "God grant I have come home."

What hours, what days and nights he spent in the weeks that followed.
In truth they were too full of intense feeling to be wholly happy. Many
a night he woke trembling from dreams of anguish. There were three
dreams which came again and again--one was of the morning when she
galloped past him in the narrow lane with the strange look in her eyes,
and he never dreamed it without a nightmare sense of mad despair and
loss from which his own wild cry to her would wake him; another was of
the night she passed him on the stair, and did not see him. Oh, God
(for 'twas in this wise the dream always came), she did not see him.
She passed him by again. And there was left only the rose lying at his
fee