His estate was in Hertfordshire, that county of gentle hills and tangled
lanes, of ancient oaks and wide wild heaths, of historic houses, and
dark woods, and green fields innumerable--a Wordsworthian shire, steeped
in the deepest peace of England. As Orth drove towards his own gates he
had the typical English sunset to gaze upon, a red streak with a church
spire against it. His woods were silent. In the fields, the cows stood
as if conscious of their part. The ivy on his old gray towers had been
young with his children.

He spent a haunted night, but the next day stranger happenings began.


II

He rose early, and went for one of his long walks. England seems to cry
out to be walked upon, and Orth, like others of the transplanted,
experienced to the full the country's gift of foot-restlessness and
mental calm. Calm flees, however, when the ego is rampant, and to-day,
as upon others too recent, Orth's soul was as restless as his feet. He
had walked for two hours when he entered the wood of his neighbor's
estate, a domain seldom honored by him, as it, too, had been bought by
an American--a flighty hunting widow, who displeased the fastidious
taste of the author. He heard children's voices, and turned with the
quick prompting of retreat.

As he did so, he came face to face, on the narrow path, with a little
girl. For the moment he was possessed by the most hideous sensation
which can visit a man's being--abject terror. He believed that body and
soul were disintegrating. The child before him was his child, the
original of a portrait in which the artist, dead two centuries ago, had