n man, heavy and motionless, his brow
resting on his arm, his face buried in the grass; he had parted more
easily with the woman he loved than he had parted with Forest King. The
chimes of some far-off monastery, or castle-campanile, swung lazily in
the morning stillness; the sound revived him, and recalled to him how
little time there was if he would seek the flight that had begun on
impulse and was continued in a firm, unshrinking resolve; he must go on,
and on, and on; he must burrow like a fox, hide like a beaten cur; he
must put leagues between him and all who had ever known him; he must
sink his very name, and identity, and existence, under some impenetrable
obscurity, or the burden he had taken up for others' sake would be
uselessly borne. There must be action of some sort or other, instant and
unerring.

"It don't matter," he thought, with the old idle indifference, oddly
becoming in that extreme moment the very height of stoic philosophy,
without any thought or effort to be such; "I was going to the bad of my
own accord; I must have cut and run for the debts, if not for this; it
would have been the same thing, anyway, so it's just as well to do it
for them. Life's over, and I'm a fool that I don't shoot myself."

But there was too imperious a spirit in the Royallieu blood to let him
give in to disaster and do this. He rose slowly, staggering a little,
and feeling blinded and dazzled with the blaze of the morning sun as
he went out of the beech wood. There were the marks of the hoofs on the
damp, dewy turf; his lips trembled a little as he saw them--he would
never rid the horse again!

Some two miles, more or less, lay between him and the railway. He was
not certain of his way, and he felt a sickening exhaustion on him;
he had been without food since his breakfast before the race. A
gamekeeper's hut stood near the entrance of the wood; he had much
recklessness in him, and no caution. He entered through the half-open
door, and asked the keeper, who was eating his sausage and drinking his
lager, for a meal.

"I'll give you one if you'll bring me down that hen-harrier," growled
the man in south German; pointing to the bird that was sailing far off,
a mere speck in the sunny sky.

Cecil took the rifle held out to him, and without seeming even to pause
to take aim, fired. The bird dropped like a stone through the air into
the distant woods. There was no tremor in his wrist, no uncertainty in
his measure. The ke