reeking waters into the cool ocean. The bright brown sails, low hulls,
and gaily painted spars of the barges dropping down with the stream
added to the beauty of the scene.

Such was the morning that greeted Christian Vellacott, as he opened the
door of his little Chelsea home and stepped forth a free man. When once
he had made up his mind to go, every obstacle was thrown aside, and his
determination was now as great as had been his previous reluctance. He
had no presentiment that he was taking an important step in life--one of
those steps which we hardly notice at the time, but upon which we look
back in after years and note how clear and definite it was, losing
ourselves in vague conjecture as to what might have been had we held
back.

Christian being practical in all things, knew how to travel comfortably,
dispensing with rugs and bags and such small packages as are understood
to be dear to the elderly single female heart.

The smoky suburbs were soon left behind, and the smiling land gave forth
such gentle, pastoral odours as only long confinement in cities can
teach us to detect. Christian lowered the window, and the warm air
played round him as it had not done for two long years. The whizz of the
wind past his face brought back the memory of the long, idle, happy days
spent with his father in the Mediterranean, when they had been half
sailors and wholly Bohemians, gliding from port to port, village to
city, in their yacht, as free and careless as the wind. The warm breeze
almost seemed to be coming to him from some parched Italian plain
instead of pastoral Buckinghamshire.

Then his thoughts travelled still further back to his school-days in