“I shall do my best,” I replied. It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was as brave a speech as I was able to bring over my lips. The truth is my tongue failed me. When I looked up again a little wistful smile lay in the corners of my brother’s mouth and he was drawing in the reins to turn about. We parted. I urged the roan forward and started off down the other side of the hill. Now and then the impulse rose within me to turn and wave a last farewell, but ever as it did, new strength came to me and I set my face resolutely forward. The horse broke into a loose trot. Faster and faster I went over the uneven road. More than once I thought I would be pitched headlong from my mount. I entered a sharp bend in the hills. As I turned the horse’s head the tall trees stood between me and my home like a great black wall. Within an hour or two I realized that I was treading on new ground. Yet the further I went, the freer I felt. I was like a bird loosed from long confinement in a cage. The joy of exploration was lending me fresh thoughts and my dependence on those at home was shaken gradually from me like the last threads of an old garment. The highway was like a country in itself. It had its inhabitants and its customs, its laws and traditions. Its population, too, began to strike me as singularly fanciful. Traveler after traveler passed me, the one on the heels of the other. But all of them of interest. Indeed so different were they from one another that I was soon set speculating and wondering what manner of life they led and above all where in the world could they be going. The first person worth mentioning whom I came across was a scrivener. That is to say, one of those wandering scholars—a man skilled in the art of writing. He was sitting on a stone near a little brook that ran bubbling from the cool of the trees. He was munching at some bread and cheese as contentedly as you could wish. Alongside of him in the grass lay a long round bundle wrapped in a dirty cloth. Beside this lay a handful of quills and a horn in which he carried his ink. His appearance was nothing to boast of. His forehead and hands were streaked and smeared black and a full week’s growth of beard covered his face. And the worst thing about him was his clothes—an ill-fitting suit of velvet of dark blue, spotted and ragged, which some one had given him. At the first sight of me his jaw fell agape. The bread which he had just stuffed into his mouth fell in crumbs over his knees. His eyes glared at me as though they would start from their sockets. I thought a kind of fright had overtaken him, but in the next second he jumped to his feet with the lightness of a hare and laid his hand over his heart in a way that reminded me strongly of De Marsac. Then he swept the ground with his soiled cap and bowed. “My Lord,” he said with the utmost seriousness, “I am alone. I lack company. Will you be gracious enough to dine with me?” At that he straightened up and smiled.