promise haunt me from time to time, and has done to-day
particularly.'

There was a pause, and they smoked on. Millborne's eyes, though
fixed on the fire, were really regarding attentively a town in the
West of England.

'Yes,' he continued, 'I have never quite forgotten it, though during
the busy years of my life it was shelved and buried under the
pressure of my pursuits. And, as I say, to-day in particular, an
incident in the law-report of a somewhat similar kind has brought it
back again vividly. However, what it was I can tell you in a few
words, though no doubt you, as a man of the world, will smile at the
thinness of my skin when you hear it . . . I came up to town at one-
and-twenty, from Toneborough, in Outer Wessex, where I was born, and
where, before I left, I had won the heart of a young woman of my own
age. I promised her marriage, took advantage of my promise, and--am
a bachelor.'

'The old story.'

The other nodded.

'I left the place, and thought at the time I had done a very clever
thing in getting so easily out of an entanglement. But I have lived
long enough for that promise to return to bother me--to be honest,
not altogether as a pricking of the conscience, but as a
dissatisfaction with myself as a specimen of the heap of flesh called
humanity. If I were to ask you to lend me fifty pounds, which I
would repay you next midsummer, and I did not repay you, I should