at a cross-track but the storm demon had found and shattered on his blazing anvil. The pitiful symbols of the old love, of the old belief--one by one he had splintered and flung them as he swept on his road. Nor only the symbols of the old faith, but of the new order. For entering in the end the very gates of the city, he had driven with a desperate rally of ferocity at certain sentinels ensconced dismally in their boxes against the railings of public buildings, and, consuming them, had committed their ashes to the consideration of the anarchy to which he had rushed to subscribe. Such revelations were all for the morrow; and in the meantime Ned was become a little fateful waif of the first processes of the force. The storm came upon him when alighted in the deep woods behind the chateau. Passing under cover through Méricourt a few minutes earlier, he had peeped through his tilt, scanning the familiar scenes with a strange little emotion of memory. Feeling this, he had almost regretted his venture. Perhaps the emotion was accountable, he thought, to the heat--to the re-enacting of an atmosphere that was charged with suggestion. He could--and did--recall a vision by the village fountain--the vision of a girl, all bold outline and colouring, standing with her arms crooked backwards under her lifted hair. He could recall another figure coming up the field-path hard by--a face of pearly shadows and wondering blue eyes under a great fragrant load of grasses. These blue eyes haunted him in the retrospect, even while he shut his own angrily upon the little ghostly impression. Why could he not dismiss the thought of them from his mind? Why had he submitted himself to the influence of the place at all? It was too late now to retreat. His carter--a sleepy Liégeois, attired appropriately in a hoqueton, or smock, like a night-gown--led his team stolidly by fountain and “Landlust,” past church and smithy, and so through the village into the forest road beyond. Ned, in the darkness, felt in his breast for his talisman, his tiny packet of geranium flower; and bringing out his hand scented, kissed it. Then, restored thereby to reason, in the thick of the woods he hailed his jehu to a stop, descended, and, paying liberally for his journey, plunged amongst the trees.