“Lancaster”--the words came hesitatingly, almost as if the speaker wondered at himself and them--“there’s one thing I envy you, anyway! I’m just a plain business-man who’s never run up against much except money that everybody else doesn’t taste equal, but you and your father between you have had something bigger and grander than comes to most folk, something that sets you near alongside the gods. They say old Whinnerah stuck it out because of you both, though Brack went to fetch him. For how many of us others, I wonder, would a man die to prove our pledged word?” Before he went upstairs, Lanty opened the door and called to Helwise, still purring over her prospects. She rose startled, and came fearfully. He was standing by the table, and upon it the _Gazette_ lay wide. The whole world might see it now. “I hope you haven’t waited up for me,” he said, quite gently. “I just wanted to tell you that I should like those cuttings in a book, after all. I should be grateful if you would finish them for me.” The tears rushed back to her eyes. “I didn’t mean to vex you. I didn’t mean to be prying and unkind! I thought all the fine things they said about the Lugg might comfort you a little--help you----” “They have helped me.” “Of course I know you’ll blame yourself because those two old people got themselves drowned, and the sheep and the mangolds and everything like that, but everybody thought it was very wonderful when it was built, and admired your father and said he had such a good leg! He was ever so proud of that photograph when it came out.” “I am proud of it, too,” Lanty said, leaning over the paper. He looked long from his father’s face to that of Wolf behind. It was hard to think that both were dead--men of a personality that never really dies, but lives on in its effects. Taking a pen, he added a letter to the inscription below, and left the paper lying-- “CONQUERORS OF THE SEA.” CHAPTER XXVII THE GREEN GATES OF VISION:--VI. SWEETHEART-TIME In the late October afternoon Lancaster rode through the Lane fast, for he was behind time with his promise. Therefore he looked ahead of him to each flying curve, letting the Gates of Vision pass without notice, nor culling one magic thrill from the garden of enchantment. Yet he checked suddenly where the Lane ran off at right angles like a darting trout, half lest his pressed horse should take the hedge, half in joyful recognition. Out on the drifting distance--of the land, yet of the sky also--his Ghost-Mountain smote his eye with its strange twin-qualities of edged clarity and floating opaqueness, like the Shoulder of God made manifest, yet not clothed upon with flesh. What help had it for him, after all these desolate months?