Turning away from the approaching intruder, he commenced his calculation afresh. Suddenly a voice hailed him joyfully. 'Back again! Back again, Pater, at long last! Yes, the rolling stone has gathered some moss after all--honourably, if luckily, come by. So here I am, Pater, like the Prodigal--to crave forgiveness, and--to repay you my debts.' Heronsbeck turned and stared upon the speaker. 'Joe!' he cried faintly, but with Joe, his only son, he had quarrelled. Joe had vanished on the Klondyke in a blizzard. This must be his ghost. 'Come, Dad!' called the beloved figure in front of him beseechingly. 'My boy, my boy!' cried his father, pressing his son to his bosom. 'Thank God for ye, my boy, my boy! But how can it be that you're alive?' he asked apprehensively, as though fearing his son might vanish again from his eyes. 'A good Samaritan--this time disguised as a Jesuit Father, rescued me. Then I saved a pal myself eventually, who died of fever and left me all his pile.' 'Yet I heard the peacock cry this morning,' muttered Heronsbeck to himself, still apprehensive of misfortune. 'And did you also, Pater, hear the peacock shouting?' asked his son in astonishment. 'Why, as I came over the fell by the Hanging Stone at break o' day--just above the young larch plantation where we had the record woodcock shoot--I heard his rasping cry. "Hallo!" I called back to him. "Hallo, old bugler! You've got it all wrong this time. 'Tis not 'The Last Post,' but 'Reveille' that you must sound over Heronsbeck Hall this day."' KITTY'S BOWER When Eric Chesters of Chesters Castle married Miss Brocklebridge--the bold and handsome heiress of Sir William, ironmaster, baronet, and expectant baron, all the world and his wife clapped hands and cried 'an ideal arrangement,' and foretold long years of success and happiness for the happy pair. At the club after the wedding the 'best man,' however, set forth a different view of the matter. 'Of course on paper it's ideal,' he said; 'Sir William is of the order of Melchisedec--having neither father nor mother, while Eric's pedigree is the joy of the Heralds' College. Edith's money will pay off the mortgages on Chesters Castle, no doubt, but, as Stevenson shrewdly said, "_The Bohemian must not marry the Puritan._" Now Eric is not naturally a marrying man; he yielded to his aged mother's solicitations and the well-developed charms and black eyes of his wife. She sighs for a career, and thinks Chesters Castle a fine foundation for it, but her crest is a ladder; Eric's is a pierrot. In short, she is an Alpine climber, and Eric a charming Prince Florizel of Bohemia. I give them a year in which to find each other out--_apres cela le deluge_.' The 'best man' proved right in his casting of their horoscope, for a prolonged honeymoon spent in going round the world revealed a rift in the lute which a season in town developed into an undoubted crack.