After walking about a mile, he took the trouble to inquire his whereabouts from the first person he encountered, who informed him that he was fifteen miles from Killalochie, and fourteen from Halko’s Head. On this he determined to walk to Halko’s Head. He wanted to see that place once more, and to visit the little classic temple on the cliff, which on the previous day he had omitted to examine. He was in no humour for even his uncle’s society, and dreaded a return to the little inn at Killalochie, where genial Dan would question him about his adventures, and where he must perhaps reveal his disappointment, if that could be called a disappointment which had annihilated so frail a hope. “A day’s solitude will do me good,” he thought, as he turned his face towards Halko’s Head. “I can get back to Killalochie by nightfall, before my uncle can alarm himself about my absence.” The walk occupied some hours, and when the traveller entered the little fishing village nature asserted itself in spite of despair, and he was fain to order breakfast at the humble hostelry where he had lunched the day before. The same woman waited upon him: she was the mistress of the house, and again he questioned her about the lady and gentleman who occupied Lord Pendarvoch’s house four-and-twenty years ago; but she could tell him no more to-day than yesterday. No new facts had returned to her memory during the interval. As Eustace Thorburn sat alone after this unprofitable conversation, the first anguish of despair yielded to the sweet whispers of hope. Was his case indeed utterly hopeless? M. de Bergerac asked security for the future. That he could not now offer; but if his poem should win recognition, the pathway of literary success would be opened to him, and on his industry and perseverance alone would depend his speedy achievement of a secure position in the world of letters. Such an income as his Uncle Daniel earned with ease, and squandered with even greater facility, would support a home which M. de Bergerac’s simple taste would not despise. “Why should I not win her as fair a home as she has at Greenlands,” he said, “and if she loves me she will wait. Ah, if I had only seen her, if I had but told her how devotedly she is loved!” And then he reproached himself for his precipitancy. In his desire to act honourably, he had played too much the part of a little boy who asks a boon of his schoolmaster. He had at least the right to plead his own cause with Helen de Bergerac. He told himself that if his poem should be a success, he could go to Greenlands once more to entreat permission to speak to his divinity. Armed with the talisman of success, he could ask as much. And then he thought of Helen’s youth. What might he not achieve in a few years? He remembered what his uncle had said to him--“If her love is worth winning, she will wait.”