ssel, down to the smallest sailing-boat,
was bedecked with bunting from bowsprit-end to taffrail. The bells
rang on like mad. The bells. . . . He dropped the hand which had
been shading his eyes, let dip his frayed cuff in the water of the
fountain and, removing his hat, dabbed his bald head. This--had he
known it--worsened the smears of dust. But he was not thinking of
his appearance.

He was thinking--had been thinking all the way from Plymouth--only of
the harbour at his feet, and the town beyond. His eyes rested on
them again, after ten years. All the way his heart had promised him
nothing but this. He had forgotten self; having in ten years, and
painfully, learnt that lesson.

But the music of the bells, the distant sounds of cheering, recalled
that forgotten self; or perhaps it leapt into assertiveness again
unwittingly, by association of ideas with the old familiar scene.
He had left the people cheering. . . . Was it ten years ago?
They were cheering still. . . .

The road within view was deserted. But from below the dip of the
hill the cheers ascended, louder and louder yet, deepening in volume.

He had intended to walk down the hill--as he hoped, unrecognised--
cross the ferry, and traverse the streets of Troy to his own front
door; then, or later, to announce himself. A thousand times in his
far prison in Briancon among the high Alps he had pictured it.
He had discounted all possibilities of change. In ten years, to be
sure, much may happen. . . .

But here below him lay the harbour and the town, save for these
evidences of joy surprisingly unchanged.

Why were the church bells ringing; the people shouting? Could word
have been carried to them? He could not conceive how the news had
managed to outstrip him.

He had left the people cheering; they were cheering still. . . . Were
these ten years, then, but a grotesque and hideous dream? He gazed
down upon his wooden leg, stiffly protruding before him and pointing,
as it were ironically, at the scene of which it shared no memories.

A moment later he lifted his head at the sound of hoofs galloping up
the road towards him. Round the corner, on a shaggy yellow horse
almost _ventre-a-terre_, came a little man in a cocked hat, who rose
in his stirrups drunkenly and blew a kiss to a dozen armed pursuers
pounding at his heels.

Between wonder and alarm, the Major (you have guessed it was he)
sprang up from his seat by the fountain. Fatal movem