manhood. It had been in his power to do so much--he had actually
done disastrously little. He had loafed through life without a thought
beyond the passing interest of the moment. And even in the greater
interests of his life, travel and big game, he had failed to exert
himself beyond a mediocre level. He had travelled far and shot a rare
beast or two, but so had many another--and with greater difficulties
to contend with than he who had never wrestled with the disadvantages
of inferior equipment and inadequate attendance. Muscularly and
constitutionally stronger than the average, physically he could have
done anything. And he had done nothing--nothing that others had not
done as well or even better. It was sufficiently humiliating. And
the outcome of his reflections had been a keen desire for work, hard
absorbing work, with the hope that bodily fatigue might in some measure
afford mental alleviation. It did not even need finding. With a certain
shame he admitted the fact. It had waited for him any time these last
ten years in his own home. The responsibility of great possessions was
his. And he had shirked. He had evaded the duty he owed to a trust he
had inherited. It was a new view of his position that recent thought
had awakened. It was still not too late. He would go back like the
prodigal--not to eat the fatted calf, but to sit at the feet of Peters
and learn from him the secret of successful estate management.

For thirty years Peter Peters had ruled the Craven properties, and
they were all his life. For the last ten years he had never ceased
urging his employer to assume the reins of government himself. His
entreaties, protestations and threats of resignation had been
unheeded. Craven felt sure that he would never relinquish his
post, he had grown into the soil and was as firmly fixed as the
Towers itself. He was an institution in the county, a personality
on the bench. He ruled his own domains with a kindly but absolute