IT was with confused feelings that Appleby, treading softly as he crossed the gravelled terrace, slipped into the gloom of a shrubbery. There was a trace of frost in the air, and the stars shone brightly, but here and there a thin white mist hung in filmy wisps. He was, however, conscious of an elation which had a curious bracing effect. Violet Wayne had trusted him with her confidence, and it was the first time a woman of her station had cast more than a passing glance on him. Her reposeful serenity, with its faint suggestion of imperiousness, had impressed him more than her beauty, and he was sensible of an unbounded respect and admiration for Tony’s fiancée. Tony had also, in his indolent fashion, and perhaps because the favors he dispensed cost him nothing, been a good friend to him, which was, however, not astonishing, since Appleby had fought most of his battles for him and stood between him and the results of his easy‐going carelessness at school. Tony Palliser was one of the men who need the guidance of a stronger hand, and usually obtain it. Appleby had, however, affairs of his own to think of that night, and as he swung across a misty meadow the half‐formed resolution which had been long in his mind took definite shape, and he decided he would not go back to the drudgery his soul detested. His father had risen by valor from the ranks, and the instincts he had stubbornly held in check at last asserted themselves dominantly. He remembered the sordid poverty, the struggle to maintain appearances, and the strain of forced attention to an uncongenial task, and asked himself half contemptuously why he had borne them so long. He had spent his early years in Spain, where he had been taught out of charity by an army chaplain, and had reckless brown‐ faced muleteers and smugglers and grave artillery officers, the gatekeepers of the Mediterranean, for his friends, while the fortnight spent at Northrop had brought back old associations overwhelmingly. It was, however, not the leisure and wealth and luxury which appealed to him—and indeed there was little of the latter at Northrop Hall—but the smell of the brown woods and the ringing of the guns. There were also the horses, for Appleby had learned to ride in Spain, the wide spaces he could gallop through with tingling blood, and the hours he had spent pitting every faculty against the wariness of the grayling in the stream. He felt he could never go back to the old colorless life again, and as he looked out into the dusky blueness under the stars and across the dim landscape which rolled away before him, silent, and wide, and shadowy, his courage rose. There was room, he felt, beyond the confines of English cities for men with thews and sinews who were willing to hew their own way to fortune out in the wind and sun.