tews sent up for the shooting luncheons, and had set out his
supper on the upturned fragment of an old box which had once held meal
for pheasants, he had provided at least what was necessary for his night
sojourn. This food he had brought with him; a thermos bottle full of hot
coffee, with slices of ham, cheese, and bread; and he ate it with
appetite, sitting on a log beside the fire, and pleasantly conscious as
he looked round him, like the Greek poet of long ago, of that "cuteness"
of men which conjures up housing, food, and fire in earth's loneliest
places. Outside that small firelit space lay the sheer silence of the
wood, broken once or twice by the call and flight of an owl past the one
carefully darkened window of the hut, or by the mysterious sighing
and shuddering which, from time to time, would run through the crowded
stems and leafless branches.

A queer "hotel" this, for mid-November! He might, if he had chosen, have
been amusing himself, _tant bien que mal_, in one or other of those
shabby haunts,--bars, night-clubs, dancing-rooms, to which his poverty
and his _moeurs_ condemned him, while his old comrades, the lads he had
been brought up with at school and college, guardsmen, Hussars, and the
rest, were holding high revel for the Peace at the Ritz or the Carlton;
he might even, as far as money was concerned, now that he had bagged his
great haul from Rachel, have been supping himself at the Ritz, if he had
only had time to exchange his brother-in-law's old dress suit, which
Marianne had passed on to him, for a new one, and if he could have made
up his mind to the possible recognitions and rebuffs such a step would
have entailed. As it was, he preferred his warm hiding-place in the heart
of the woods, coupled with this exultant sense of an unseen and
mysterious power which was running, like alcohol, through his nerves.

Real alcohol, however, was not wanting to his solitary meal. He drenched
his coffee in the cognac he always carried about with him, and then,
cigarette in hand, he fell back on the heap of bracken to read a while.
The novel he sampled and threw away; the anthology soon bored him; and he
spent the greater part of two hours lying on his back, smoking and
thinking--till it was safe to assume that the coast was clear round Great
End Farm. About ten o'clock, he slipped noiselessly out of the hut, after
covering up the fire to wait for his return, and hiding as far as he
could the other traces of