while since, seemed again to lay tormenting clutches upon him. After
all, was not a man for ever the slave of his past? No present success,
no future triumphs could ever wholly free him from the memory of that
one merciless hour. As a rule his thoughts recoiled shuddering from
even the slightest lingering about it. To-night there swept in upon him
with irresistible force a crowd of vivid memories. He saw the quaint
old village, its grey stone houses dotted about the hillside, the
farmhouse which had been his home--bare, gaunt, everything outside and
in typical of the man who ruled there and over the little neighbourhood,
a tyrant and a despot. The misery of those days laid hold of him, He
turned away from the railings and walked Strandwards, past the door of
his lodgings and round many side streets, grimy and unpretentious. He
walked like a man possessed, but his memories had taken firm hold of
him, shadowy but inexorcisable fiends. It was Cicely now who was
walking by his side, and his heart was beating with something of the old
stir. What a change her coming had made in that strange corner of the
world. Cicely, with her dainty figure and bright, sunny smile,
wonderfully light-hearted, a gleam of brilliant colour thrown across
their grey life. She loved poetry too, the hills, the sunsets, and
those long walks across the purple moorland. It was a wonderful
companionship into which they had drifted. He was her refuge in a life
which she frankly declared to be insupportable. She was a revelation to
him--the first he had had--of delicate femininity, full ever of
suggestions of that wonderful world beyond, of which at that time he had
only dared to dream. It was she who had kindled his ambitions, who had
preached to him silently, but with convincing eloquence, of the glories
of freedom, the heritage of his manhood. And all the while Joan, from
apart, was watching them. No word crossed her lips, yet often on their
return from a day's rambling he caught a look in her eyes which amazed
him. Gideon Strong went his way unseeing, stern, and unbending as ever