CHAPTER L. THE SOLDIER OF MISFORTUNE The little flicker of hope--faint enough it was--that cheered up Tony's heart, served also to indispose him to meet with Lady Lyle; for he remembered, fresh as though it had been the day before, the sharp lesson that lady had read him on the “absurd pretensions of certain young gentlemen with respect to those immeasurably above them in station.” “I am not in a humor to listen to the second part of the homily, which certainly would not be the less pointed, seeing that I am a wayfarer on foot, and with my knapsack strapped behind me.” It gave him no sense of shame that Alice should have seen him thus poor and humble. He never blushed for his pack or his hobnailed shoes. If _she_ could not think of him apart from the accidents of his condition, it mattered very little what he wore or how he journeyed. And as he cheered himself with these thoughts he gained a high peak, from which he could see the pine-clad promontory of Sestri, some thousand feet down below him. He knew the spot from description, and remembered that it was to be one of his resting-places for a night. It was no new thing for Tony to strike out his own line across country--his was a practised eye--to mark the course by which a certain point was to be reached, and to know, by something like instinct, where a ravine--where a river must lie--where the mountain-side would descend too precipitously for human footsteps--where the shelving decline would admit of a path--all these were his; and in their exercise he had that sort of pride a man feels in what he deems a gift.