“Very well,” said John. He felt as if he had got his orders when these words were said. Of course it was to Fernwood he must go to see if any comfort was to be had there. Fanshawe threw no light upon what he ought to do, neither did Camelford; and Fernwood was the only place that remained. He shook hands with Mr Whichelo again, and went out with a certain alacrity. The junior at his desk in the window no longer troubled him. Yes; no doubt the boy would sit there, and see Kate come and go, and take no thought. The beautiful Miss Crediton, with all her gaieties and splendour, would be nothing to him: far better that he should fill that corner and make his entries, than that John should sit there consuming his heart. Fernwood was ten miles off, but it was a bright day, and to walk there was the best thing he could do. It gave him time to think, and it kept up a certain rhythm of movement and action about him which prevented him from thinking--and that on the whole was the best. The long road spun along like a thread, lengthening and lengthening as he went on, moving as if off a wheel, with half-stripped trees and falling leaves, and brown hedges, and here and there the russet glory of a bramble-branch trailing over the humid grass. Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel, he seemed to hear some one singing as he went on and on; and the gleaming line of path spun out, circling out of the horizon on one side, back into it on the other, and there seemed no reason why it should ever come to any pause. His brain was giddy, and spun, too, as the road did. He went on with a buzzing in his ears, as if he too were on the wheel, and was winding, winding, and revolving with it, now up, now down, going on and on. What the end was, or if there was any end, he did not seem to know. It was the measured chant, the circles woven by mystic feet, never ending, still beginning. He had come to the very park of Fernwood before he roused himself from this strange dreamy sense of movement. It was a brilliant autumn, and already the beech-trees and the oaks were dressed in a hundred colours. The gentlemen of the party would of course be among the covers--and the ladies---- Here John paused, and began to ask himself what his meaning was. Was it Kate he had come to see? was it into her hands that once more, once again, like a fool, he was going to put his fate?