alone, not in better company. A twinkle would have shone in his eyes, for
he eloped with the young lady who became his wife. He got her out of her
home at Bath, through a window, and they were happy ever after.' To end a
day happily was a maxim with Sir George, since it meant wisdom for the
morrow.




V SOUTHWARD HO!


Now, the morrow called Sir George Grey, as it calls most, whether they
hear it or no.

In him, boyish meditation had ever been braided by melancholy, a legacy
of the shock with which his father's death burst upon his mother. As he
grew up, this became a deep-seated pity for the suffering, wide and
bitter, among the common people. His mother's care, his step-father's
converse, fostered that feeling, and the service in Ireland, with its
lurid emphasis of the misery he had seen in England, determined him in
quite a definite way. A valley of despair moaned in his ear.

'Can nothing,' he reflected with himself, 'be done for this canker, this
wretchedness? Not much, from the inside, it may be, for the evil has too
firm a grip. But down there, in the far south, is a new world! Surely it
has the secret of sweeter, freer homes; surely in those new countries lie
better possibilities? Yes, there the future has its supreme chance,
there is the field for a happier state of existence! All can be given a
chance, and in the spacious view, it will be planting posts of an