He had risen to his feet after his last statement and was looking back towards the Hall, but he faced me again when I spoke. "Oh, no!" he said with a hint of weariness. "It isn't likely that..." He broke off and threw himself moodily down on the grass again before he continued, "It's not that I couldn't trust you. But you can see for yourself that it's better I shouldn't. When you get back to the Hall, you might be asked questions and for your own sake it'd look better if you didn't know the answers." "Oh, quite," I agreed, and added, "I'll stay and see the sun rise." "You won't see the sun for some time," he remarked. "There'll be a lot of cloud and mist for it to break through. It's going to be a scorcher to-day." "Good," I replied; and for a few minutes we discussed weather signs like any other conventional Englishmen. A natural comparison led us presently to the subject of Canada. But through it all he bore himself as a man with a preoccupation he could not forget; and I was looking for a good opening to make an excuse of fatigue and go back to the Hall, when something of the thought that was intriguing him broke through the surface of his talk. "I'm going back there as soon as I can," he said with a sudden impatience. "There's room to turn round in Canada without hitting up against a notice board and trespassing on the preserves of some landed proprietor. I'd never have come home if it hadn't been for the old people. They thought chauffering for Mr. Jervaise would be a chance for me! Anyhow my father did. He's got the feeling of being dependent. It's in his bones like it is with, all of 'em--on the estate. It's a tradition. Lord, the old man would be horrified, if he knew! The Jervaises are a sort of superior creation to him. We've been their tenants for God knows how many hundred years. And serfs before that, I suppose. I get the feeling myself, sometimes. It's infectious. When you see every one kow-towing to old Jervaise as if he were the angel Gabriel, you begin to feel as if there must be something in it." The full day had come, and the cold draught of air that had preceded the sunrise came now from behind me as if the spirits of the air had discovered that their panic-stricken flight had been a mistake and were tentatively returning to inquire into the new conditions. The birds were fully awake now, and there was a tremendous gossiping and chattering going on, that made me think of massed school-children in a railway station, twittering with the excitement of their coming excursion. In the North-East the gray wall of mist was losing the hardness of its edge, and behind the cloud the sky was bleaching to an ever paler blue. "And yet," I said, as my companion paused, "the Jervaises aren't anything particular as a family. They haven't done anything, even in the usual way, to earn ennoblement or fame."