The slowly receding form of Mr. Goldman waddled along by the hedge, turned into the lane, passed from view. In almost the same moment William Hollis felt a severe depression. He had reached the stage of life and fortune when he could not bear to be alone. With a kind of dull pain he realized that this was his forty-first birthday and that he had failed in life. He was going down the hill. Unless he could take a pull on himself he was done. Already it might be too late. The best part of his life was behind him. A year ago that day, in this very garden, his only source of happiness, he had told himself that; two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, this had been the burden of his thoughts. But he was in a rut and there seemed to be no way out. Twenty years ago he had felt it was in him to do something. He was an ambitious young fellow with a mind that looked forward to the day after to-morrow. Such a man ought to have done something. But now he knew that there had been a soft spot in him somewhere and that a moral and mental dry rot had already set in. He was a talker, a thinker, a dreamer; action was not his sphere. Unless he took a strong pull on himself he was out of the race. He poured what remained of the jar of ale into the earthenware mug he kept for the purpose--Blackhampton ale tastes better out of a mug--and drank it slowly, without relish. Then he cut a few flowers to take home to his wife--to the wife who hadn't spoken to him for nearly a week--arranged them in a bunch, with the delicacy of one unconsciously sensitive to form and color, looped a bit of twitch neatly round them, put on his coat, a stained and worn alpaca, put on his hat, a battered, disreputable straw, cast the eye of a lover round his precious garden, locked its dilapidated green door and started down the lane and down the hill towards the city. It was now five o'clock and a little cooler, yet William Hollis walked very slowly. There was a lot of time to kill before the day was through. But his thoughts were biting him harder than ever as he turned into the famous road leading to the city, known as The Rise. This salubrious eminence, commanding the town from the northeast, was sacred to the city magnates. When a man made good in Blackhampton, really good, he built a house on The Rise. It was the ambition of every true Blackhamptonian to express his individuality in that way. Until he had achieved a house entirely to his own fancy and taste on The Rise, no son of Blackhampton could be said really to have "arrived."