it. Your room is--er, quite ready for you. I shall be
glad if you will make use of it as long as you like. You will be free to
come and go as if you were in your own house."

Jack nodded with a strange, twisted little smile, as if he were
suffering from cramp in the legs. It was cramp--at the heart.

"Thanks," he said, "I should like nothing better. Shall I ring?"

"If you please."

Jack rang, and they waited in the fading daylight without speaking. At
times Sir John moved his limbs, his hand on the arm of the chair and his
feet on the hearth-rug, with the jerky, half-restless energy of the aged
which is not pleasant to see.

When the servant came, it was Jack who gave the orders, and the butler
listened to them with a sort of enthusiasm. When he had closed the door
behind him he pulled down his waistcoat with a jerk, and as he walked
downstairs he muttered "Thank 'eaven!" twice, and wiped away a tear from
his bibulous eye.

"What have you been doing with yourself since I saw you?" inquired Sir
John conversationally when the door was closed.

"I have been out to India--merely for the voyage. I went with Oscard,
who is out there still, after big-game."

Sir John Meredith nodded.

"I like that man," he said, "he is tough. I like tough men. He wrote
me a letter before he went away. It was the letter of--one gentleman to
another. Is he going to spend the rest of his life 'after big-game'?"

Jack laughed.

"It seems rather like it. He is cut out for that sort of life. He is too
big for narrow streets and cramped houses."

"And matrimony?"

"Yes--and matrimony."

Sir John was leaning forward in his chair, his two withered hands
clasped on his knees.

"You know," he said slowly, blinking at the fire, "he cared for that
girl--more than you did, my boy."

"Yes," answered Jack softly.

Sir John looked towards him, but he said nothing. His attitude was
interrogatory. There were a thousand questions in the turn of his head,
questions which one gentleman could not ask another.

Jack met his gaze. They were still wonderfully alike, these two men,
though one was in his prime while the other was infirm. On each face
there was the stamp of a long-drawn, silent pride; each was a type of
those haughty conquerors who stepped, mail-clad, on our shore eight
hundred years ago. Form and feature, mind and heart, had been handed
down from father to son, as great types are.

"One may have the right feeling and bestow it