needed rest, with a bright brown portmanteau marked "F. W. L.",
a new white-and-black straw hat, and two pairs of white flannel
trousers. He was naturally exhilarated at his release from school--
for he was not very fond of the boys he taught. After dinner he
fell into a discussion with a talkative person established in the
boarding-house to which, acting on the advice of his aunt, he had
resorted. This talkative person was the only other man in the house.
Their discussion concerned the melancholy disappearance of wonder
and adventure in these latter days, the prevalence of globe-trotting,
the abolition of distance by steam and electricity, the vulgarity
of advertisement, the degradation of men by civilisation, and many
such things. Particularly was the talkative person eloquent on
the decay of human courage through security, a security Mr. Ledbetter
rather thoughtlessly joined him in deploring. Mr. Ledbetter, in the
first delight of emancipation from "duty," and being anxious, perhaps,
to establish a reputation for manly conviviality, partook, rather
more freely than was advisable, of the excellent whisky the talkative
person produced. But he did not become intoxicated, he insists.

He was simply eloquent beyond his sober wont, and with the finer
edge gone from his judgment. And after that long talk of the brave
old days that were past forever, he went out into moonlit Hithergate--
alone and up the cliff road where the villas cluster together.

He had bewailed, and now as he walked up the silent road he still
bewailed, the fate that had called him to such an uneventful life
as a pedagogue's. What a prosaic existence he led, so stagnant,
so colourless! Secure, methodical, year in year out, what call was
there for bravery? He thought enviously of those roving, mediaeval
days, so near and so remote, of quests and spies and condottieri