His absence was the more inexcusable in that it was uncertain how soon he might have to leave England. He was a civil engineer; and from the time he had left the apprentice stool his life had been a series of foreign excursions. He had been two years in Turkey, another year in Canada, six months in Russia, and so on; and at this moment he had been but a short time home from Wallachia, whence he had returned with his face browner his frame tougher than ever. There was little of the young Englishman about him. There was a Celtic intensity in him which had long ago robbed him of the loose fat, the lazy gait, the apathetic indifference which generally fall to the lot of lads born and brought up as he had been; and now—with his big brown moustache, thick hair, and hazel eyes, and with that subdued determination in his look, which had made the little _soubrette_ call him an Ancient Briton—he was a man whom some would call handsome, but whom most people would admire chiefly on account of the intelligence, firmness of character, and determination written upon his face. He dressed and breakfasted hastily; got a cab, and was just in time to catch the train. After nearly an hour’s drive down through Kent—pleasant enough on that bright Spring morning—he reached Horton, the station nearest to St. Mary-Kirby. Horton stands on the top of a hill sloping down into the valley in which lies St. Mary-Kirby; and if you climb, as Will Anerley did, to the top of a coal heap which generally stands besides the empty trucks of the station, you will see the long wooded hollow from end to end, with its villages, churches, and breadths of field and meadow. It was not to look again, however, on that pretty bit of scenery which he knew so well that he scrambled to the top of the coals, and stood there, with his hand shading his eyes from the sunlight. It was Dove Anerley he wished to see come along the valley, on her way to church; and he waited there to discover what route she should take, that so he might intercept her. Yet there seemed to be no living thing in the quiet valley. Sleepily lay the narrow river in its winding channel, marked by twin rows of pollard willows, now green with their first leaves; sleepily lay the thin blue smoke above the far white cottages and the grey churches; sleepily lay the warm sunlight over the ruddy ploughed fields, the green meadows, the dark fir-wood along the top of the hill; and sleepily it struck on the great, gleaming chalk-pit on the side of the incline; while a faint blue haze hung around the dim horizon, half hiding the white specks of houses on the distant uplands. It was a beautiful picture in the tender light of the young spring; but there was no Dove Anerley there. He looked at his watch. "Half-past ten," he thought, "and as our church is under repair, she is sure to walk to Woodhill church. But if I go down into the valley, I shall be sure to miss her."