heaped them in a space of dry sand. They were a little wet, so they
burned slowly with a great smoke, which the rising night wind blew
behind him. He was still hungry, so he ate the food he had brought in
his pockets; and then he lit his pipe. How oddly the tobacco tasted in
this moment of high excitement! It was as if the essence of all the
pipes he had ever smoked was concentrated into this last one. The smoke
blew back, and as he sniffed its old homely fragrance he seemed to feel
the smell of peat and heather, of drenched homespun in the snowy bogs,
and the glory of a bright wood fire and the moorland cottage. In a
second his thoughts were many thousand miles away. The night wind
cooled his brow, and he looked into the dark gap and saw his own past.

The first picture was a cold place on a low western island. Snow was
drifting sparsely, and a dull grey Atlantic swell was grumbling on the
reefs. He was crouching among the withered rushes, where seaweed and
shells had been blown, and snow lay in dirty patches. He felt the thick
collar of his shooting-coat tight about his neck, while the December
evening grew darker and colder. A gillie, who had no English, was lying
at his right hand, and far out at sea a string of squattering geese were
slowly drifting shorewards with the wind. He saw the scene clear in
every line, and he remembered the moment as if it had been yesterday, It
had been one of his periods of great exultation. He had just left
Oxford, and had fled northward after some weeks in Paris to wash out the
taste of civilization from his mouth among the island north-westers. He
had had a great day among the woodcock, and now was finishing with a
stalk after wild geese. He was furiously hungry, chilled and soaked to
the bone, but riotously happy. His future seemed to stretch before him,
a brighter continuation of a bright past, a time for high achievement,
bold work, and yet no surcease of pleasure. He had been master of
himself in that hour, his body firm and strong, his soul clear, his mind
a tempered weapon awaiting his hands.

And then the scene changed to a June evening in his own countryside. He
was deep in the very heart of the hills beside a little loch, whose
clear waves lapped on beaches of milky sand, it was just on twilight,
and an infinite sighing of soft winds was around him, a far-away
ineffable brightness of sunset, and the good scents of dusk among thyme
and heather. He had fished all the afternoo