Anthony's task was less simple. Apart from his compliance with the Law--a painful and embarrassing ordeal, which Mr. Plowman fussily stage-managed, dressing every detail with such importance that the layman's wonder melted gradually to a profound contempt--there was much to be learned. That all was in beautiful order saved the situation. And a letter, addressed to him in Winchester's bold handwriting, proved a master-key to the mysteries of income and outgoings. _... There's three hundred on deposit at the Bank. That's to cover the immediate expense of putting me away. Now look at Sheet 7. That's last year's balance-sheet. That'll show you I was well within my income. All the same, expenses will have to be cut--to provide for me. The wages must stand, and so must the "Horses and Stalling" (Book 2). Don't part with the roan. There'll be times when you'll have to go to Town, as I did, for odd accessories. "Tools and Materials" (Book 3) will have to suffer, but we're well set up now, so you ought to pull through...._ There was an invitation, too, to live at the mansion, which Anthony did not accept. Twice a week he would visit the office and work there faithfully, but he could not bring himself to live in the house. Apart from the manner in which the blow had been dealt him, he felt the loss of his employer most bitterly. He found the tragedy even more piteous than terrible. That so rude an axe should have been laid so untimely to the root of so glorious a tree filled him with sorrow. That the tree should have heard the step of the woodman on his way to the felling, haunted his memory. So far, however, as Lyveden's health of mind was concerned, itself grievously inopportune, the catastrophe could not have happened at a more opportune moment. Trading upon the heels of his encounter with Valerie, it made a terrific counter-irritant to the violent inflammation which that meeting had set up. Yet if the back of the sickness was broken, disorder and corrective, alike so drastic, were bound seriously to lower the patient's tone. His splendid physical condition supported its brother Mind and saw him well of his faintness, but the two red days left their mark. Looking back upon them later, Anthony found them made of the stuff of which dreams are woven--bitter, monstrous dreams, wherein the impossible must be performed lest a worse thing befall and a malignant eye peers beneath stones which even Misery herself would leave unturned. How he had parted with Valerie he was uncertain. He could not remember her going. Of her coming he knew nothing at all. She had appeared and, he supposed, disappeared. Of Winchester's attack upon him, and the subsequent chase, his memory was clearer. How he had escaped, however, at the foot of the brier-clad slope, he could not conceive. He could have sworn that for the last thirty paces the man was not three feet behind....