He was now respectably dressed, and might be recognized by any native in the regions of his old home. But he was greatly altered. He had not been to Normansgrave, except on the occasion of his mother's funeral, since he was seventeen. He was now twenty-three, but looked far older, with the strain of his disgrace printed in deep lines upon his sensitive features. He had been clean-shaven, but the difficulties connected with shaving on board the barge had induced him to allow his beard and mustache to grow. The young, soft dark beard gave him a foreign look. The only thing upon which he ventured in the way of disguise was a pair of blue-tinted spectacles. As a matter of fact, his eyesight was perfect, and no one who had known him in boyhood would have connected the idea of Felix and weak eyes. He put on a necktie of a kind which in his own proper person he would never have worn; and though he could not suppose that he could be seen at close quarters by anybody who had known him well without recognition, ultimate, if not instantaneous, he yet felt it possible that even a friend should not know him at a glance. From the police he thought the risk not great. He did not suppose that Rankin Leigh had more than one agent, and his agent had left the neighborhood. The police were not looking for Felix Vanston alive, but for a corpse, which, if their theories were true, could not be in the place where he now was. And even were they seeking for him alive, they would not seek anywhere near his old home. If he could pass unrecognized by any of the natives round about Normansgrave, all would be well. And well he knew the habits and haunts of the natives upon a fine spring Sunday! If he could not keep out of people's way, with his foot upon his native heath, it was a pity! And moreover, there was a point in his meditations, when risk ceased to count, and a mounting excitement took his breath and made the lovely landscape reel before his dazzled eyes. He was going to see Rona--the girl who was a stranger--the girl who was everything--the girl whom he had snatched from the wolves. Nothing else really mattered. No considerations of prudence must be allowed to intervene. Who knew what might, or might not, happen when they actually met? He had taken some food in his pockets, and on leaving the station he made for the woods. They were full of Sunday strollers; but these, like a flock of sheep, kept all to beaten tracks, and Felix knew every wild hollow and deep thicket in the countryside. He plunged away deep in the glorious spring woodland, amid a white smother of wild cherry bloom, contrasting with the delicate bronze and purple of the bursting hazel bushes. The pale green tips of the larches rose as feathery and faint, as an exquisite dream. It was a wood of fairyland.