He scarcely went to bed at all that night. Hosts, armies, legions of thoughts came up and possessed him like an invaded country, marching and counter-marching through his mind. It was not without a struggle that he yielded, it was not without many struggles. Half-a-dozen times at least he was the victor, and rejected conclusively, triumphantly, the idea set before him; and then the landscape would change, the perspective alter, and regrets, doubts, convictions that wrong was right, specious arguments to show how entirely it had always been so, would rise up and bring back the rushing tide of battle. And then there were things he had to do. He went to bed only when the morning grey had come up over the little town on the other side of the loch, bringing it out of the darkness with a curious furtive aspect, stealing into the light as if it had been lying in wait for this moment, which indeed was quite true. He tossed himself on his bed, and courted sleep ineffectually for half an hour, but after that time it came with all the force of a despot. He slept, as men or boys sleep only at twenty, till the day was bright all over the loch. At twenty! oh heavens, was that all the age he was, that haggard little grey face waking up and remembering in the great pale shining of the light. He went into Archie’s room on his way downstairs and put back the cheque book which he had found. Archie had breakfasted an hour before, and explained to the family that he was going to Glasgow by the mid-day boat, and Saumarez with him, to see after those things for the ball. “You seem to be getting great friends with Eddy,” Mrs. Rowland said in the pause which followed this speech. The words were simple enough, but they went with a wave of interest round the table. “Well, no harm Evelyn, no harm,” said Rowland, pleased that his boy was making friends in what the poor man in his heart called “our own position.”