s gaze was satisfied and bland.

Up in the little smoking-room in a leather chair his master sat asleep.
In front of him were stretched his legs in dusty riding-boots. His lips
were closed, but through a little hole at one corner came a tiny puffing
sound. On the floor by his side was an empty glass, between his feet
a Spanish bulldog. On a shelf above his head reposed some frayed
and yellow novels with sporting titles, written by persons in their
inattentive moments. Over the chimneypiece presided the portrait of Mr.
Jorrocks persuading his horse to cross a stream.

And the face of Jaspar Bellew asleep was the face of a man who has
ridden far, to get away from himself, and to-morrow will have to ride
far again. His sandy eyebrows twitched with his dreams against the
dead-white, freckled skin above high cheekbones, and two hard ridges
were fixed between his brows; now and then over the sleeping face came
the look of one riding at a gate.

In the stables behind the house she who had carried him on his ride,
having rummaged out her last grains of corn, lifted her nose and poked
it through the bars of her loosebox to see what he was doing who had
not carried her master that sweltering afternoon, and seeing that he was
awake, she snorted lightly, to tell him there was thunder in the air.
All else in the stables was deadly quiet; the shrubberies around were
still; and in the hushed house the master slept.

But on the edge of his wooden chair in the silence of his pantry the
old manservant read, "This bird is a voracious feeder," and he paused,
blinking his eyes and nervously puckering his lips, for he had partially
understood....

Mrs. Pendyce was crossing the fields. She had on her prettiest frock, of
smoky-grey crepe, and she looked a little anxiously at the sky. Gathered
in the west a coming storm was chasing the whitened sunlight. Against
its purple the trees stood blackish-green. Everything was very still,
not even the poplars stirred, yet the purple grew with sinister,
unmoving speed. Mrs. Pendyce hurried, grasping her skirts in both her
hands, and she noticed that the cattle were all grouped under the hedge.

'What dreadful-looking clouds!' she thought. 'I wonder if I shall get
to the Firs before it comes?' But though her frock made her hasten, her
heart made her stand still, it fluttered so, and was so full. Suppose
he were not sober! She remembered those little burning eyes, which had
frightened her so the nig