ction in the Shrewsbury
book-seller's shop. "If I could only have worked at a business!" he
thought. "If I could only have known that the company of poets and
philosophers was company too high for a vagabond like me!"

He sat down alone in the great hall; the silence of it fell heavier and
heavier on his sinking spirits; the beauty of it exasperated him, like
an insult from a purse-proud man. "Curse the place!" he said, snatching
up his hat and stick. "I like the bleakest hillside I ever slept on
better than I like this house!"

He impatiently descended the door-steps, and stopped on the drive,
considering, by which direction he should leave the park for the country
beyond. If he followed the road taken by the carriage, he might risk
unsettling Allan by accidentally meeting him in the town. If he went
out by the back gate, he knew his own nature well enough to doubt his
ability to pass the room of the dream without entering it again. But
one other way remained: the way which he had taken, and then abandoned
again, in the morning. There was no fear of disturbing Allan and the
major's daughter now. Without further hesitation, Midwinter set forth
through the gardens to explore the open country on that side of the
estate.

Thrown off its balance by the events of the day, his mind was full
of that sourly savage resistance to the inevitable self-assertion of
wealth, so amiably deplored by the prosperous and the rich; so bitterly
familiar to the unfortunate and the poor. "The heather-bell costs
nothing!" he thought, looking contemptuously at the masses of rare and
beautiful flowers that surrounded him; "and the buttercups and daisies
are as bright as the best of you!" He followed the artfully contrived
ovals and squares of the Italian garden with a vagabond indifference to
the symmetry of their construction and the ingenuity of their design.
"How many pounds a foot did _you_ cost?" he said, looking back with
scornful eyes at the last path as he left it. "Wind away over high and
low like the sheep-walk on the mountain side, if you can!"

He entered the shrubbery which Allan had entered before him; crossed the
paddock and the rustic bridge beyond; and reached the major's cottage.
His ready mind seized the right conclusion at the first sight of it; and
he stopped before the garden gate, to look at the trim little residence
which would never have been empty, and would never have been let, but
for Allan's ill-advised resolution