face of a high-bred horse, with
its deep eyes and dilated nostrils. He was barely above medium height,
and his figure was almost delicate. When he spoke his voice startled
you--it was so low and deep to come from that slight frame. His
lameness, which was slight, was due to a long-standing infirmity of the
hip.

As second son of a Cumbrian statesman, whose estate consisted chiefly of
land, he expected but little from his father, and had been trained in
the profession of a mining engineer. After spending a few months at the
iron mines of Cleator, he had removed to London at twenty-two, and
enrolled himself as a student of the Mining College in Jermyn Street.
There he had spent four years, sharing the chambers of a young barrister
in the Temple Gardens. His London career was uneventful. Taciturn in
manner, he made few friends. His mind had a tendency toward
contemplative inactivity. Of physical energy he had very little, and
this may have been partly due to his infirmity. Late at night he would
walk alone in the Strand: the teeming life of the city, and the mystery
of its silence after midnight, had a strong fascination for him. In
these rambles he came to know some of the strangest and oddest of the
rags and rinsings of humanity: among them a Persian nobleman of the late
shah's household, who kept a small tobacco-shop at the corner of a
by-street, and an old French exile, once of the court of Louis
Phillippe, who sold the halfpenny papers. At other times he went out
hardly at all, and was rarely invited.

Only the housemate, who saw him at all times and in many moods, seemed
to suspect that beneath that cold exterior there lay an ardent nature.
But he himself knew how strong was the tide of his passion. He could
never look a beautiful woman in the face but his pulse beat high, and he
felt almost faint. Yet strong as his passion was, his will was no less
strong. He put a check on himself, and during his four years in London
contrived successfully to dam up the flood that was secretly
threatening him.

At six-and-twenty he returned to Cumberland, having some grounds for
believing that his father intended to find him the means of mining for
himself. A year had now passed, and nothing had been done. He was
growing sick with hope deferred. His elder brother, Paul, had spent his
life on the land, and it was always understood that in due course he
would inherit it. That at least was the prospect which Hugh Ritson had
in vi