All that first week, old Mr Hawthorn was never tired of urging upon Edward to go back again at once to England. ‘I can depart in peace now, my boy,’ he said; ‘I have seen you at last, and known you, and had my heart gladdened by your presence here. Indeed, if you wish it, I’d rather go back to England with you again, than that you should stay in this unsuitable Trinidad. Why bury your talents and your learning here, when you might be rising to fame and honour over in London? What’s the use of your classical knowledge out in the West Indies? What’s the use of your Arabic? What’s the use of your law, even? We have nothing to try here but petty cases between planter and servant: of what good to you in that will be all your work at English tenures and English land laws? You’re hiding your light under a bushel. You’re putting a trotting horse into a hansom cab. You’re wasting your Arabic on people who don’t even know the difference between Greek and Latin.’ To all which, Edward steadily replied, that he wouldn’t go back as long as this mystery still hung unsolved over him; and that, as he had practically made an agreement with the colonial government, it would be dishonourable in him to break it for unknown and unspecified reasons. As soon as possible, he declared firmly, he would take up his abode in his own district. House-hunting is reduced to its very simplest elements in the West Indian colonies. There is one house in each parish or county which has been inhabited from time immemorial by one functionary for the time being. The late Attorney-general dies of yellow fever, or drinks himself to death, or gets promotion, or retires to England, and another Attorney-general is duly appointed by constituted authority in his vacant place. The new man succeeds naturally to the house and furniture of his predecessor—as naturally, indeed, as he succeeds to any of his other functions, offices, and prerogatives. Not that there is the least compulsion in the matter, only you must. As there is no other house vacant in the community, and as nobody ever thinks of building a new one—except when the old one tumbles down by efflux of time or shock of earthquake—the only thing left for one to do is to live in the place immemorially occupied by all one’s predecessors in the same office. Hence it happened that at the beginning of their second week in the island of Trinidad, Marian and Edward Hawthorn found themselves ensconced with hardly any trouble in the roomy bungalow known as Mulberry Lodge, and he hereditarily attached to the post of District Court Judge for the district of Westmoreland.