of the chase, well-provided for in every detail, and
dovetailed in with the assured luxury of a well-ordered, well-staffed
establishment, were exactly what he wanted and exactly what his life down
here afforded him. He was experiencing, too, that passionate recurring
devotion to an old loved scene that comes at times to men who have
travelled far and willingly up and down the world. He was very much at
home. The alien standard floating over Buckingham Palace, the Crown of
Charlemagne on public buildings and official documents, the grey ships of
war riding in Plymouth Bay and Southampton Water with a flag at their
stern that older generations of Britons had never looked on, these things
seemed far away and inconsequent amid the hedgerows and woods and fallows
of the East Wessex country. Horse and hound-craft, harvest, game broods,
the planting and felling of timber, the rearing and selling of stock, the
letting of grasslands, the care of fisheries, the up-keep of markets and
fairs, they were the things that immediately mattered. And Yeovil saw
himself, in moments of disgust and self-accusation, settling down into
this life of rustic littleness, concerned over the late nesting of a
partridge or the defective draining of a loose-box, hugely busy over
affairs that a gardener's boy might grapple with, ignoring the struggle-
cry that went up, low and bitter and wistful, from a dethroned
dispossessed race, in whose glories he had gloried, in whose struggle he
lent no hand. In what way, he asked himself in such moments, would his
life be better than the life of that parody of manhood who upholstered
his rooms with art hangings and rosewood furniture and babbled over the
effect?

The lanes seemed interminable and without aim or object except to bisect
one another; gates and gaps disclosed nothing in the way of a landmark,
and the night began to draw down in increasing shades of darkness.
Presently, however, the tired horse quickened its pace, swung round a
sharp corner into a broader roadway, and stopped with an air of thankful
expectancy at the low doorway of a wayside inn. A cheerful glow of light
streamed from the windows and door, and a brighter glare came from the
other side of the road, where a large motorcar was being got ready for an
immediate start. Yeovil tumbled stiffly out of his saddle, and in answer
to the loud rattle of his hunting crop on the open door the innkeeper and
two or three hangers-on hurried out