'His groomsman!' Boldero sat, pale and speechless and stunned by the sudden overthrow of all his hopes. The day-dream of his existence was ended by this stern awakening. Life--all that part of life, at least, which is worth living--was, he felt bitterly, over for him. It was, to use Heine's expressive figure, as if some one had climbed up a celestial ladder, rolled up the bright blue sky and taken down the sun. Only the dismal scaffolding, the dust, the gloom remained. Maud, though she had never quite encouraged him to hope, had never bidden him despair, and figured, we may be certain, the lovely chatelaine of all his castles in the air. He found out now to his cost how full his thoughts had been of her. And now it was all over. His pleasant hope lay shattered on the ground. The blow was hard to bear; none the easier, perhaps, that it was his dearest friend's hand that struck it. Being, however, a man of pluck and determination, he sat down courageously, wrote a cheery note of congratulation to the fortunate winner of the prize, promised his services as groomsman or anything else which Sutton wished, and then ordered his horse and rode twenty miles to an outlying village, where there was a troublesome boundary dispute to be settled, which he had had in his eye for weeks past as wanting a visit from the Collector. CHAPTER XXVII. CHRISTMAS AT DUSTYPORE. Truth is the strong thing. Let man's life be true-- And love's the truth of mine--time prove the rest! Christmas had arrived, and Christmas was a festival observed at Dustypore with all the emphasis proper to men who had carried their Lares and Penates beneath a foreign sky, and were treasuring in alien regions the sacred fire of the paternal hearth. The weather was cold enough to realise all that English tradition requires as 'seasonable' in the way of climate. For weeks past, great bullock-carts, piled high with gnarled heaps of jungle-wood, had been creaking along the dusty tracks from the outlying villages and supplying the Station with materials for Christmas-fires of appropriate magnificence. The air was deliciously clear, crisp and invigorating: the searching wind came with its breath frozen from the Elysian snows and left a hoary rime on all the country's face. English habits began to resume their sway: people were glad to forego the morning ride, and came down to breakfast at half-past nine with red noses and blue fingers and--romantic reminiscence of European life--extremely bad colds in their heads.