Mr. Aston looked at the note again and reread the signature, then he gave it back, satisfied. "What will happen if he won't accept it?" he questioned thoughtfully. "It is for him to decide." Aymer's tone was earnestly emphatic. "Father, we've done our part. We can't alter it if we would. Leave him free." "It is the crown of your success that you can do so, my dear old fellow." "The coronation has not taken place yet," returned Caesar, with a touch of dry humour that reassured his father more than any words that all was well with his son. * * * * * Meanwhile, hour after hour, Christopher's car raced over the white roads. The twinkling lights in the villages through which he sped grew fewer and at last ceased. A more solid blackness was the only inkling of dwellings on either hand. Once the low, vibrating hum of the car seemed to bring a light to a high window, but it fell back into the dark before he had caught more than a faint glimmer on the blind. He met nothing: the road for all he knew was utterly empty of life. In the silent, motionless darkness it was like a path into illimitable space. He knew every mile of it, yet in the night the miles stretched out and raced with him. It was far from village or town when at last Christopher wrenched his mind from the mechanical power that held it prisoner, and realised that town or no town, bed or no bed, he must stop. He brought the car to a standstill under the lea of a low ridge of downs, at a point where an old chalk pit reared its white face, glimmering faintly in the darkness. He hazarded a fair guess as to his whereabouts. Whitmansworth must be fifteen or twenty miles ahead. It was nearly midnight now. He would get no lodging even if he went on. He backed the car off the road into the circle of the chalk pit, made as comfortable a resting place as he could with rugs and cushions between the motor and the white wall, and extinguished the lamps. The cool, still night had him to herself, and cradled him to sleep as a mother her child, under the folds of her dark mantle. He woke when the first fingers of dawn busied themselves with the hem of that dusky cloak, and sound as faint and tremulous as the light itself whispered across the earth. He watched a while to see the dim shapes reform under the glowing light, and the clouds that still curtained the sky, take on themselves a sombre grey uniform. But directly the line of white road took distinctness Christopher struck camp, and boldly raced to meet the full day. An early shepherd paused to watch him pass, returning impassively to work as he disappeared. Two or three labouring men also stared; one even commented to a fellow worker that "these yere motors take no more heed o' decent hours than o' natural distances. Five in the mornin' weren't part o' the gentry's day when I were a boy," he grumbled, "and five miles were five miles, no more nor less. 'Tisn't more nor a mile now."