as clear--he could see it squelching below him, pale
in the last wet daylight--but where the devil did it lead? Into the
heart of a moss, it seemed, and yet Brampton lay out of the moors in the
tilled valley.

At first the fumes in his head raised him above the uncertainty of his
road and the eternal downpour. His mind was far away in a select world
of his own imagining. He saw himself in a privy chamber, to which he had
been conducted by reverent lackeys, the door closed, the lamp lit, and
the Duke's masterful eyes bright with expectation. He saw the fine
thin lips, like a woman's, primmed in satisfaction. He heard words
of compliment--"none so swift and certain as you"--"in truth, a
master-hand"--"I know not where to look for your like." Delicious
speeches seemed to soothe his ear. And gold, too, bags of it, the tale
of which would never appear in any accompt-book. Nay, his fancy soared
higher. He saw himself presented to Ministers as one of the country's
saviours, and kissing the hand of Majesty. What Majesty and what
Ministers he knew not, and did not greatly care--that was not his
business. The rotundity of the Hanoverian and the lean darkness of the
Stuart were one to him. Both could reward an adroit servant.... His
vanity, terribly starved and cribbed in his normal existence, now
blossomed like a flower. His muddled head was fairly ravished with
delectable pictures. He seemed to be set at a great height above mundane
troubles, and to look down on men like a benignant God. His soul glowed
with a happy warmth.

But somewhere he was devilish cold. His wretched body was beginning to
cry out with discomfort. A loop of his hat was broken and the loose flap
was a conduit for the rain down his back. His old ridingcoat was like a
dish-clout, and he felt icy about the middle. Separate streams of water
entered the tops of his ridingboots--they were a borrowed pair and too
big for him--and his feet were in puddles. It was only by degrees that
he realised this misery. Then in the boggy track his horse began
to stumble. The fourth or fifth peck woke irritation, and he jerked
savagely at the bridle, and struck the beast's dripping flanks with his
whip. The result was a jib and a flounder, and the shock squeezed out
the water from his garments as from a sponge. Mr. Lovel descended from
the heights of fancy to prosaic fact, and cursed.

The dregs of strong drink were still in him, and so soon as exhilaration
ebbed they gave ed