A pretty situation wherein to bring his forty-eight years’ experience and his thirteen stone of flesh! As he ruefully felt over his bruised body and damaged garments, his fingers struck against a hard outline in his waistcoat pocket. The key! He gave a soft chuckle. It was a poor end to a summer night’s venture, but an undoubted relief to be able to extricate oneself in commonplace fashion by walking out through an open gate. Wrapping his philosophical humour round him as the best cloak to cover his sense of moral dilapidation, he was cautiously picking his way, when he became aware of a hasty footstep behind him. As he turned round, the moonlight showed him a tall, slender black figure, a haggard, white face! “Luke Herrick!” “Colonel Harcourt!” The older man was the first to speak. He was not astonished—only (he told himself) highly amused. There was a tone in his voice, however, which belonged less to amusement than to some biting desire to use the keenest-edged weapon wits could provide. “How fortunate that I should have the key of the gate and be able to let you out, Mr. Herrick!” He began to fumble for the lock in the darkness of that shaded spot, and laughed as he felt the young man press forward suddenly behind him and then draw back a step with a hissing breath. The gate creaked on its hinges. Colonel Harcourt, with a gesture the mocking courtesy of which was lost in the night, invited the other to proceed. “After you, sir. Why do you hesitate? It is quite fit that dashing youth should take precedence of middle-age on certain occasions.” Herrick clenched his fist; then with a desperate effort regained control of his most sore and injured self and stalked out of the garden, spurning that earth his feet would tread for the last time. “You walk late, my young friend,” resumed Harcourt, as he joined him. “So do you, sir!” cried Herrick thickly. The colonel laughed with quite a mellow sound. In proportion as Herrick’s discomfiture became manifest his own geniality returned. “Our ways lie together as far as the moat-bridge,” remarked he. Herrick made no reply. What though she had fallen, and fallen to such an one, she was still a woman; and through him, who had worshipped her, shame should not come upon her. Let Harcourt mock and jeer in his triumph, he would be patient ... till a fitter moment. “By George! our little Romeo is discreet,” thought the colonel. “But I’ll loosen your tongue yet, you dog!—A charming night!” quoth he aloud. “Delightful last remembrance to carry away with one, is it not?” Herrick paused for an appreciable instant; then steadily took up his way again, still in silence. “I presume you leave to-morrow?” pursued the elder man. “Our good host——” “You, I presume,” interrupted Herrick, “intend to remain, at least in the neighbourhood!”