"I would sooner live in Grub Street, and drive a quill!" he said half aloud. "I could praise a hero with my pen, but I cannot fawn and flatter with my lips. And methinks I am not fit for the life of a place-man: I have been too long mine own master. Surely there are ways by which a man may rise in the world without abasing himself in his own esteem first. I will go to London, and look about me with open eyes. There are the world of politics, the world of art and literature, and the theatre of war, if other spheres should fail. Surely there must be a place for me somewhere; but I will not choose the latter if I can help it. I fear not death on mine own account; but I desire to live, and to grow rich, that I may square matters with yonder villain, and avenge upon him my father’s untimely death!" For that his father had been in some sort done to death by his false kinsman, Grey did not now doubt, though whether he would be able to bring that crime home to him later, he could not at present surmise. Much might be possible to a man with friends in high places; but these would have to be found and won ere any step could be taken. Grey often felt within himself the stirrings of ambition. He had shown promise of something akin to genius in his Oxford days, and there had not been lacking those among his companions and tutors who had declared that he could win fame and fortune through academic laurels. But Grey had then turned a deaf ear to such propositions. He desired to travel and see the world, and he had done this with much zest. But the muse within had not been altogether silent, and he had many times covered sheets of paper with flowing stanzas or stately sonnets, which bore witness to the fire that burned within. His pencil, too, was not without cunning; and his study of the treasures of many an art gallery, many a foreign church, had given him knowledge and culture beyond what the average gallant of the day could boast. The double strand in his nature was very marked—a reckless love of adventure, and a delicate appreciation of the beautiful. Often he longed after the days of the early troubadours, when the two walked hand in hand. He pondered these matters in his busy brain as he rode onward in the sunny brightness of the June morning, and found it in his heart to wish that he was not thus possessed by such conflicting passions. He felt he would have had a better chance of success had his bent in any one direction been more decided.