"And in the quest of it," he went on, "you fancied that all the currents of your nature had been swept into a fresh channel; that you were a new man; that this upheaving strife altered the face of all things, and you along with it." "Why, and so it has!" cried I. "Nay, but think awhile! You have marched and countermarched for--how long?--two years?--two years of that period of life when honest thoughtful men turn to making account with themselves, try to learn why they were sent into the world and what to do, observe the hopes and ambitions of their fellows, prove their own limits, and so set up their rest against old age and death. You rode from home under a sudden persuasion that your business in the world, and the business of all these thousands of different men, was to defend his Majesty. How long this persuasion held you I will not guess; yet I do not doubt that, as the days went by, you observed all these particles of an army returning to their true natures--the young gentlemen of your troop picquering in bravado, or in mere love of a skirmish, because their blood is hot; coarser fellows lusting to break heads for the sake of plunder; craftier knaves, who know that war is insanely wasteful, robbing their own side at less risk; calculators such as Wilmot, Grenville, Goring, playing for high stakes under the fence of warfare, which of itself interests them not a jot. As for you, Sir--I took note of your horse just now at the churchyard gate. You see well to his grooming." "I groom him always with my own hand," said I. "To be sure--a man of method, strict and punctual in all soldierly duties! But the savour has gone out of them. Where the treasure is, there will the heart lie also." He nodded toward my drawings. Now there lurked a nettle of truth in his words, and it stung me. "And where may your treasure lie, Sir?" I asked pretty sharply. "Come," said he, and led the way out into the churchyard. The sun was fast declining, and the light fell in warm beams against the gravestones and over the belted trees that ringed the prospect. He waved a hand. "From the high land above us, Sir, you may look almost to two seas; and between these two seas all was once Carminowe's. Two hundred years before the Normans came, Carminowe was a great man; and for four hundred years after." "A wide treasure," said I. "You will not find my heart hid beneath a single turf of it, but here only," said he, and pointed; and I looked down upon a green grave. "I think that I understand, Sir," said I, as gently as might be. "He was your son." He bent his head. Yet anon shook it, patiently dissenting. "He was my son; the child of my old age. But, to understand, you must first be father to such an one, and outlive him."