"Very well, I'll come. I'll get over early in the afternoon.... Now I must say good-bye." "When I see you next I may have heard from Baker. Then we shall know our fate." "Our fate...?" "Yes, for if Baker can't take my stuff, no one else will, and my last chance is gone." "Don't think of such a thing, dear." "No, I won't. I'll think of you, dream of you--whenever you are so gracious as to let me sleep." He stood up, and drew her head down to his shoulder, holding it there with trembling hands, while his lips sought her face. Her mouth was against his sleeve, and she kissed it while he kissed her cheek and neck. For a full minute they stood together thus, and when they drew apart, the first star hung a timid candle above the burnt-out fires of the west. CHAPTER V THE HERO October dropped from red to brown in a sudden night of rain, and the Three Counties began to draw over themselves their fallow cloaks of sleep. In every view the ploughed fields spread brown and wet and empty, some with a ruddy touch of Kentish clay, others with a white gleam of Surrey chalk. Nigel flung himself into the farmyard toil, and complained because it was too scanty. Their ten acres of grass and orchard, with three or four cows and some poultry, did not give nearly enough work, he thought, to two able-bodied men. He remembered the days when the acres of Sparrow Hall had rolled through marsh and coppice into Kent--when fifteen sweet-mouthed cows had gathered at the gates at milking-time, and golden rye from their high fields had gone in their waggon to Honey Mill. He was miserably aware that he had no one but himself to blame for this, though his brother and sister never reproached him. He had been impatient of the slow bounties of the fields, he had plunged into quick, adventurous dealings; for a few months he had brought wealth, hurry and excitement into his life--then had come poverty, and the ageless monotony of prison. When he looked round on their reduced estate it was not so much humiliation that ate into his heart as a sense of treachery. He had betrayed the country. Impatient of its slow, honest ways, he had sought others, crooked, swift, defiled. He had turned renegade to the quiet fields round his home, and entered a rival camp of reckless strivings and meanness. This had been his sin, and he was being punished for it still. The punishment of the State for his sin against the State was over ... but the punishment for his sin against his home, the country, and himself was still being meted out to him by all three.