For Cosmo Paradyne the history of the next hour or two was surprise piled on astonishment. A glimpse in a small hanging mirror showed a bronzed almost youthful face and clear eyes. His hands were brown and the palms curiously hardened. To make coffee and boil eggs for the satisfaction of an unprecedented hunger seemed a matter of everyday habit. He ate the food with extraordinary relish. As he shaved and washed, there lurked at the back of his mind a dim consciousness of having gone through the same performances amid the same surroundings for a long time past. He seemed to know that stuffed away at the bottom of the cupboard were his golf stockings and knickerbockers and cap. A prescient glance around showed him on a ledge a coarse, peasant’s straw hat with a floppy brim which he recognized as his ordinary daily wear. He put it on and went out into the early morning sunshine and drew great breaths of the sweet air. He laughed, exhilarated by a new sensation as though he had undergone a radical physical change. What was it? It took him some time to realize that never before had he been conscious of such supreme and exhilarating health. It was a joy to feel the spring in his mere tread. He lit his pipe and hands in pockets stared, with proprietary air, over the illimitable landscape of La Beauce. Then he walked round his perambulating property. A big-boned brown horse ceased his munching as he approached and thrust forth a questing muzzle. At the back of the vehicle he found a bag of provender and a wooden pail of water from which he administered to the animal’s needs. He reflected for a moment. There was a horse, there was a thing on wheels. The logical procedure was to harness the horse and travel on, all the more because no earthly purpose could be served by remaining stationary in the wilderness. It was only when he had attached the animal, in the most business-like way, between the shafts, that he began to wonder how the deuce he had managed to do it. His life had been passed remote from horses. Never had he driven or ridden, still less, harnessed one. It was amazing. Stooping down he picked up the silver flageolet which he had all but forgotten. How went the air which he had played that morning and which had brought back those clear pictures of his garden in Ealing? He could not remember. Even with the instrument to his lips and his fingers on the stops he could not recall it. It had gone like elfin music heard in a dream. ‘It’s all damned queer,’ said he.