Thoughts such as those that occupied him are very matutinal in their activity, and before five o'clock on the following morning Charles Tyrrell was up and dressed. The vehicle that was to convey him did not pass the gates of the Park till about eleven o'clock, and he would have had time, if he had chosen so to act; to go down and see Lucy once more, and learn his fate from her own lips. He did not choose to do so, however; but, to fill up the hours till breakfast time, he determined to wander about the park, and in the spots where he had more than once passed some of the sweetest moments of existence in her society, to call up the delicious dream of the past, now that he was just about to place between it and hope's bright vision of the future an interval which seemed to him a long, long lapse of weary hours and dull realities. Opening the doors for himself--for, though it was daylight, none of the servants were yet up--he went out upon the lawn and gazed around him on the sparkling aspect of reawakening nature. Beauty, and peace, and harmony were over all the scene; many a glossy pheasant was strutting about here and there within the precincts of a spot where guns were never heard, and only jostled from their path by some old familiar hare, grown fat and gray on immunity and abundant food, or else startled to a half flight by the rush of the rapid squirrel darting across the lawn to some opposite tree. The opening of the door, the aspect even of man, the great destroyer of all things, did not disturb the tenants of the wood. One or two of the hares crouched down as if asleep indeed; but those who had passed many years there undisturbed showed no farther sign of apprehension than by standing up high on their hind feet, and with their ears projecting in all sorts of ways, seeming to inquire who it was that had got up as early as themselves. Having satisfied themselves of that fact, the utmost that they condescended to do was to hop a few steps farther from the house; and Charles Tyrrell was proceeding on his walk, when a window above was opened, and the voice of Mr. Driesen pronounced his name. Now of all people on earth, perhaps Mr. Driesen was the last whom Charles Tyrrell would have chosen to be his companion at a moment when such feelings as those that agitated him then were busy in his bosom, he therefore affected a deafness to Mr. Driesen's call, and, without taking the slightest notice, walked on quietly into the wood. Ere he had been absent from the house half an hour, however, and while he was yet walking up that long straight walk of beeches, from which, as we have said, Harbury Hill was visible, and which we have fully described in the first or second chapter of this book, he was joined by Mr. Driesen, who, coming straight up to him, gave him no opportunity of escaping.