Now, the road downward is easy and rapidly taken, and Ian had managed to slip from the pinnacle of ministerial fame into silence and forgetfulness in about one year, but it took him a ten years' climb to win his way to about the same pitch of public favor in his new vocation. But of this ten years I shall have little to say. The road upward is a climb to the very top, and all men find it so, but Ian enjoyed the study and the practical work of his profession and became extraordinarily skillful in it. Their lives were by no means dull or monotonous. Truly the day was given up to business, but they usually dined together at seven, and afterward went to the opera or theater, or perhaps to a reception at some house where they were familiar and honored guests. Or, if they wished to stay at their own fireside, they were the best of good company for each other. Nothing that touched man's soul or body came amiss for their discussion, and if Ian was the more widely and generally educated, Dr. Lindsey had the keener spiritual instinct, and his soul often ventured where Ian's followed only with flagging and uncertain wings. In the summer they made short trips to the Continent or they went to Glasgow, and, being joined there by the Major, sailed north to the Macrae country, and then home by Cromarty and Fife. When Ian had been in London ten years Dr. Lindsey began to talk of a rather longer holiday than usual. "But first," he added, "here is a letter from Squire Airey, and he wants either you or me to run up to Airey Hall to examine his fractured arm. It is all right, I know, but he is frightened and impatient, and you might go as far as Furness and make him comfortable." "I should like to go. I have long wanted to see Windermere, and I could return that way." With his patient at Airey Hall Ian stayed two days, and on the third morning the Squire said: "Doctor, I will give you a good mount, and you can ride as far as Ambleside. You will go through a lovely land. Leave the horse at the Salutation Inn in Ambleside when you take the train. I will send a groom for it."