“I sought _no_ profit in the transaction. I would have sacrificed more than the estate to save you and myself the necessity of this explanation. It was my affection for your father bound me to this solemn compact, as it was my regard for the latter drove me unknown to you to set an anxious eye upon your career.” “And so pluck a fool from the burning and lose an estate.” Sir Robert advanced impetuously and seized the other’s corded hand. “You are a noble soul. I will learn to pray, and you shall be my saint to intercede. I take my life from you and this strange trust; doing my duty by it and asking no questions.” The old lawyer’s eyes moistened; but he answered somewhat caustically: “I won’t say it is your deserts. But the gift is from Heaven, where your father, his battles over, sits at peace. ’Tis he hath interceded, and the Almighty--to satisfy his importunity, maybe--gives you a new house, as erst he did to Job, but for a better reason.” Then he added a little inconsequently: “You’ll find it in a damned bad state of repair.” CHAPTER IV. It was six o’clock of a cold September morning when Sir Robert--or Mr. Tuke, as we must now know him--woke in his room off the stable-yard of the old “George” inn at Winchester. Lying lazily snoozed amongst the pillows, he reviewed, with some amused satisfaction, the first courses of that scheme of reformation he had mapped out for himself, whereof two rather sleepless nights at Farnham and his present quarters--the result of an abstention in the matter of numerous “nightcaps,” which habit had made necessary to slumber--were the prologue. Now, the little battle fought and won, he preened his moral feathers smugly, and felt clear-eyed and very good indeed. As to the mysterious estate--the last stage on the journey to which he should cover that day--he had soon learned to accept its acquisition with that sweetness of irresponsibility that was his most engaging and aggravating characteristic. But, after all, he had an excellent digestion--in common with a great many men of the eighteenth century--and was little inclined to dyspeptic brooding over problems. Now, as he lay, his half-dreaming glance was arrested by a coloured print after George Morland hanging on the wall over against him. The like he remembered dimly to have known in a nursery of long ago--a picture that had often set his young soul wandering by lanes of enchantment. Nothing could have served better to confirm and make abiding his present mood. He was a boy again, an apple-skinned Ulysses, with the limitless possibilities of the unknown before him. Without stain or guile he passed beyond the narrow margins of the print into a land that no mortal foot but his own had yet trodden.