s. He remembered how it
had been part of his education as a youngster, and how in pursuit of
knowledge he had been up early and late and in the middle of the
night, picking up information about the woodland creatures from anyone
who could teach him or finding things out for himself. There was the
poacher who had shown him, for love of the sport, if sport it could be
called, how he got the pheasants silently off the boughs in the
night--taking them from their roosting-places and never a sound. He
had given that poacher a bright half-crown, he remembered, and his
firm lips twitched a little over the recollection. He had not seen the
humour then of paying the man who was stealing his uncle's
pheasants--the pheasants that would some day be his. He wondered if
the boys in England now, the future landowners, were taught woodlore
as he had been taught it, because it was good for an English gentleman
to know all the scents and signs and sounds of his estate.

And after all, he was no landowner at all. By his own act, instead,
merely an officer in the British South Africa Police, with a few
hundreds a year income, and nothing but a meagre pension ahead.

Ah well! he had had a good deal besides for what he had lost, and it
had been a good life enough, dependent solely on himself, and far
removed from the caprices of a rich uncle. He regretted nothing at
this stage of what had transpired after the upheaval came. Of course,
his brother was now owner of the estates that might have been his, and
was married, and had children; whereas he was a soldier-policeman
looking forward to a meagre pension.

Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered. It was only that, seeing so
much more of the Pyms socially than he had been wont to see of anyone,
old memories had been awakened. He hoped they would soon go to sleep
again, for, in passing, they had taken some of the restfulness out of
Rhodesia's far horizons, and fretted the flow of the strong, silent
river, with a vague discontent. Sometimes between him and those far
horizons there was a face now--sometimes a voice--sometimes just a dim
presence--the voice and the face and the presence of Meryl Pym. And it
was a thing to be fought down and crushed and conquered--a weakness
that was well-nigh a foolishness--a folly such as stern men trample
underfoot.

So when Mr. Pym asked him to dine with them privately, he made some
excuse, and only yielded under pressure. And when he joined them he
was in