ine
had asked him to ride through the grounds, and it had been the
baronet's intention to propose during that ride that he should go
over to Noningsby and speak to the judge about Madeline. We all know
how that proposition had been frustrated. And now Peregrine, thinking
over the matter, saw that his grandfather was not in a position at
the present moment to engage himself ardently in any such work. By
whatever means or whatever words he had been induced to agree to the
abandonment of that marriage engagement, that abandonment weighed
very heavily on his spirits. It was plain to see that he was a broken
man, broken in heart and in spirit. He shut himself up alone in his
library all that afternoon, and had hardly a word to say when he came
out to dinner in the evening. He was very pale too, and slow and weak
in his step. He tried to smile as he came up to his daughter-in-law
in the drawing-room; but his smile was the saddest thing of all. And
then Peregrine could see that he ate nothing. He was very gentle
in his demeanour to the servants, very courteous and attentive
to Mrs. Orme, very kind to his grandson. But yet his mind was
heavy;--brooding over some sorrow that oppressed it. On the following
morning it was the same, and the grandson knew that he could look to
his grandfather for no assistance at Noningsby.

Immediately after breakfast Peregrine got on his horse, without
speaking to any one of his intention,--almost without having formed
an intention, and rode off in the direction of Alston. He did not
take the road, but went out through The Cleeve woods, on to the
common, by which, had he turned to the left, he might have gone to
Orley Farm; but when on the top of the rise from Crutchley Bottom he
turned to the right, and putting his horse into a gallop, rode along
the open ground till he came to an enclosure into which he leaped.
From thence he made his way through a farm gate into a green country
lane, along which he still pressed his horse, till he found himself
divided from the end of a large wood by but one field. He knew the
ground well, and the direction in which he was going. He could pass
through that wood, and then down by an old farm-house at the other
end of it, and so on to the Alston road, within a mile of Noningsby.
He knew the ground well, for he had ridden over every field of it.
When a man does so after thirty he forgets the spots which he passes
in his hurry, but when he does so before twenty he