hankful to accept the certainty of even so modest a competence as that.

"I'm awfully sorry, but I can't," he said. "It means giving up everything
I've aimed at for years. In one way and another I've had a roughish time,
but I always had that one hope before me, to get qualified so that I might
travel; and now, when I wake in the morning, my bones simply ache to get
off, I don't mind where particularly, but just away, to places I've never
been to."

Now the goal seemed very near. He would have finished his appointment at
St. Luke's by the middle of the following year, and then he would go to
Spain; he could afford to spend several months there, rambling up and down
the land which stood to him for romance; after that he would get a ship
and go to the East. Life was before him and time of no account. He could
wander, for years if he chose, in unfrequented places, amid strange
peoples, where life was led in strange ways. He did not know what he
sought or what his journeys would bring him; but he had a feeling that he
would learn something new about life and gain some clue to the mystery
that he had solved only to find more mysterious. And even if he found
nothing he would allay the unrest which gnawed at his heart. But Doctor
South was showing him a great kindness, and it seemed ungrateful to refuse
his offer for no adequate reason; so in his shy way, trying to appear as
matter of fact as possible, he made some attempt to explain why it was so
important to him to carry out the plans he had cherished so passionately.

Doctor South listened quietly, and a gentle look came into his shrewd old
eyes. It seemed to Philip an added kindness that he did not press him to
accept his offer. Benevolence is often very peremptory. He appeared to
look upon Philip's reasons as sound. Dropping the subject, he began to
talk of his own youth; he had been in the Royal Navy, and it was his long
connection with the sea that, when he retired, had made him settle at
Farnley. He told Philip of old days in the Pacific and of wild adventures
in China. He had taken part in an expedition against the head-hunters of
Borneo and had known Samoa when it was still an independent state. He had
touched at coral islands. Philip listened to him entranced. Little by
little he told Philip about himself. Doctor South was a widower, his wife
had died thirty years before, and his daughter had married a farmer in
Rhodesia; he had quarrelled with him, and she had not