the new task were
too much for him, he sank back in thought. The last words he said to
Scorrier that night were: "Very silent here. It's hard to believe
one's here for life. But I feel I am. Mustn't be a coward, though!"
and brushing his forehead, as though to clear from it a cobweb of faint
thoughts, he hurried off.

Scorrier stayed on the veranda smoking. The rain had ceased, a few stars
were burning dimly; even above the squalor of the township the scent of
the forests, the interminable forests, brooded. There sprang into his
mind the memory of a picture from one of his children's fairy books--the
picture of a little bearded man on tiptoe, with poised head and a great
sword, slashing at the castle of a giant. It reminded him of Pippin. And
suddenly, even to Scorrier--whose existence was one long encounter with
strange places--the unseen presence of those woods, their heavy, healthy
scent, the little sounds, like squeaks from tiny toys, issuing out of
the gloomy silence, seemed intolerable, to be shunned, from the mere
instinct of self-preservation. He thought of the evening he had spent
in the bosom of "Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings' family, receiving his
last instructions--the security of that suburban villa, its discouraging
gentility; the superior acidity of the Miss Hemmings; the noble names
of large contractors, of company promoters, of a peer, dragged with the
lightness of gun-carriages across the conversation; the autocracy of
Hemmings, rasped up here and there, by some domestic contradiction. It
was all so nice and safe--as if the whole thing had been fastened to
an anchor sunk beneath the pink cabbages of the drawing-room carpet!
Hemmings, seeing him off the premises, had said with secrecy: "Little
Pippin will have a good thing. We shall make his salary L----. He'll be
a great man-quite a king. Ha-ha!"

Scorrier shook the ashes from his pipe. 'Salary!' he thought, straining
his ears; 'I wouldn't take the place for five thousand pounds a year.
And yet it's a fine country,' and with ironic violence he repeated, 'a
dashed fine country!'

Ten days later, having finished his report on the new mine, he stood on
the jetty waiting to go abroad the steamer for home.

"God bless you!" said Pippin. "Tell them they needn't be afraid; and
sometimes when you're at home think of me, eh?"

Scorrier, scrambling on board, had a confused memory of tears in his
eyes, and a convulsive handshake.

II

It was eight y