my time, and passing now into the night.'"

"Nay," I said, "let me quote Clough in answer to your Tennyson:

"'Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain.
The enemy faints not nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain,

'For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.'

"You are no Lotus-eater: no shirker. You are just resting in the
garden in the evening of a well-spent day, and that is right."

"For me there is no rest," he replied. "To-morrow I go to Biarritz,
and thence wherever my fancy or my doctor's instructions send me; but I
shall carry with me the burdens of the village. It is selfish of me to
tell you this, for I would not make you sad, but I am a lonely man, and
I am going away alone, and somewhat against my will, but Trempest
insists.

"I think it has done me good to unburden myself to you, and I will say
only this one word more. Always, when I return, there has been some
tragedy, great or small, which I think I might have hindered."

"Surely not," I murmured, "in so small a place."

He rested his arm upon my garden gate and smiled. "A week ago I
witnessed a terrible encounter between two redbreasts in the lane
yonder. They are very tenacious of their rights, and one of them, I
imagine, was a trespasser from the other side the hedge. They are
country birds, yet very pugnacious, and the little breasts of these two
throbbed with passion. But when I came near them they flew away, and I
hope forgot their differences. I never even raised a stick--my mere
presence was sufficient. And therein is a parable. Good-night, Miss
Holden, and au revoir!"

He opened the gate, raised his hat, and was gone.

CHAPTER VIII

CHRISTMAS DAY AT WINDYRIDGE

Christmas has come and gone, and so far not a flake of snow has fallen.
Rain there has been in abundance, and in the distance dense banks of
fog, but no frost to speak of, and none of the atmospheric conditions I
have always associated with a northern Yuletide.

Christmas Day itself, however, proved enjoyable if not wildly exciting.
The air was "soft," as the natives say, and the sun was shining mistily
when I stepped into the garden, now bare of attractions save for the
Christmas roses, whose pure white petals bowed their heads in kindly
greeting to the wrinkled face of E