Mr. Francis soon joined him for tea, and, after proposing a stroll in ten minutes\' time, had gone to his room to answer an urgent letter. Harry was well content to wait, for nothing could come amiss to a mood so harmonious as his, and, lighting a cigarette, he strolled round the walls, beholding his forbears. Opposite the portrait of old Francis, second baron, he stood long, and his eye sought and dwelt on the Luck as a familiar object. The sun, streaming through the western windows, fell full on to the picture, and the jewels, so cunning and exact was their portrayal, sparkled with an extraordinary vividness in the gleam. The Luck! Was it the Luck which had given him these days of wonderful happiness, with so great and unspeakable a hope for the days to come? Was this the huge reward it granted him, for which he had paid but with a cold in the head, a burn on the hand, a sprain of the foot? How curious, at the least, those three coincidences following so immediately on the finding of the Luck had been. How curious, also, this awakening of his (dating from the same time) from the solitary lethargy of his first twenty-one years! For the[Pg 110] awakening had come with the coming of Uncle Francis, and his own instant attachment to him. It was indeed he—he and Geoffrey, at any rate, between them on their visit here—who had started him on the voyage which had already resulted in the discovery of the world. It was then that his potential self had begun to rustle and stir in the chrysalis of isolation which had grown up round it, very feebly and tentatively indeed at first, but by degrees cracking and bursting its brown bark, then standing with quivering and momently expanding wings, which gradually unfolded and grew strong for flight. The Luck! Was it indeed the gems and the gold which had done this for him? It was much, it was very much, but to him now how infinitely more than he had, did he desire! Six months ago he had desired nothing, for he was dead; but now, being alive, how he yearned for more, one thing more!

A sudden idea seized him, and he rang the bell, and, until it was answered, looked again at the picture. Old Francis\'s face, he thought, and old Francis\'s hands, did not fare so well in the sunlight as the glorious jewel which he held. The hands clutched rather than held the cup; the lines of them were greedy and grasping, they gripped the treasure with nervous tension, and in the face there were ugly lines which he had never noticed before, but which bore out the evidence of the hands; avarice sat on that throne, and cunning as deep as the sea, and cruelty and evil mastery. Still looking and wondering, he suddenly[Pg 111] saw the face in a different light; it was no longer a vile soul that looked from those eyes, but the kind, cheerful spirit of his own uncle. He started, for the change had the vividness of actuality, and at the moment the bell was answered by the old butler.

"Ah, Templeton," he cried, "I am glad to see you. All well? That\'s right. I rang to say that I wanted you to get out the Luck—the big cup, you know, which you and I found in the attic last Christmas, and put it on the table to-night as a centrepiece."

"Mr. Francis has the key, my lord," said Templeton. "It is on his private bunch."

"Ask him to give it you, then. Say it was by my order. Oh, here he is!—Uncle Francis, I want the key of the case in which is the Luck. I want to have it on the table to-night."

"Dear boy, is it wise?" said Mr. Francis. "Supposing the house was broken into: you know the thing is priceless."

"But burglars can not take it from under our noses while we sit at dinner," said Harry, "and, as soon as dinner is over, even before we leave the room, it shall be put back again.—See to that, Templeton. That is the key, is it?—Why, it is gold, too! Old Francis knew how to do things thoroughly."

Uncle and nephew strolled out together, Harry with his head high and leading the way. An extraordinary elation was on him.

"I have a feeling that the Luck is bringing[Pg 112] me luck," he said. "Oh, I don\'t seriously believe it, but think how strange the coincidences have been! Fire, and frost, and rain! I had a turn with all of them. And you know, Uncle Francis, since I found it, I have had more happiness than in the whole of my life before."

"What happiness, Harry?"

"Friends, you the first; the joy of my life; the conscious feeling that one is alive, which I suppose is the same thing. All, all," he cried, "the world, men, women, things—all!"

Mr. Francis did not reply at once, but went forward a few steps, his eyes on the ground.

"Don\'t believe it, Harry," he said. "I would never have told you about the foolish old tale if I had thought that there was the slightest chance of your paying more attention to it than one gives to a fairy story. My dear boy, you are really quite silly. You caught cold because you would not listen to my excellent advice and change your clothes when you got in from shooting; you sprained your ankle because you did not look where you were going, and see that the steps were covered with ice; you burned yourself because a careless housemaid had forgotten to tack down the carpet! I do not believe in magic at all; there is, I assert, no such thing; but even if one did, it would be a very childish, weak kind of spell that could only bring curses of that sort."

"That is just what I think," said Harry; "the evil, perhaps, has run down, so to speak; it is nearly impotent. Oh, I am only joking. But if[Pg 113] that is the price I have paid for my present happiness, I consider it dirt cheap. And if the Luck can give me more happiness, I hereby declare to the powers that work it that I will take any amount more on the same scale of charges."

Mr. Francis laughed, and took Harry\'s arm affectionately.

"Dear lad, you were only jesting, I know," he said. "But it is not well to dwell on such fantastic things too much, though we constantly remind ourselves that they are nonsense. The human mind is a very wonderful and delicate piece of mechanism, and if once we begin playing experiments with a thing of which we understand so little, it may get out of order, and strike the wrong hour, and fail to keep time. Lead your wholesome, honourable life, dear boy, and take gratefully what happiness comes in your way, and do not forget where it comes from. Then you will have nothing to fear from the Luck."

"No, and nothing to gain from it," said Harry, "for I suspect magic can not touch those who do not believe in it."

"Dear boy, enough," said Mr. Francis, with a certain earnestness. "You have told me you do not believe in it. Ah, what a wonderful evening! Look at those pink fleeces of cloud in the west, softer than sleep, softer than sleep, as Theocritus says. How I wish I was a painter! Think of the privilege of being able to show those sunset glories; to show, too, as the true artist can, the feelings, infinite and subtle, which those rose[Pg 114] clouds against the pale blue of the sky produce in one, to show them to the toiler of the London streets. Ah, Harry, what a wealth of senses has been given us, what diverse-facing windows to our souls, and how little we trouble to look out of any, or to keep bright and clean even one! The gourmet even, the man who eats his dinner, using his palate with intelligence, is a step above most people. He has trained a sense, and what exquisite pleasure that sense, even though it be the most animal of all, gives him! And who can say that each sense was not given us in order that we should cultivate it to the fullest?"

Suddenly he raised his hat, and in a low, clear voice he cried:

"O world as God has made it, all in beauty,
And knowing this is love, and love is duty,
What further can be sought for or declared?"

For a long moment he stood there, his face irradiated by the fires of sunset, his eyes soft with gentle, unshed tears, his hair stirred by the caress of the evening breeze, with who knows what early dreams and cool reveries of boyhood reminiscent within him? His harsh, untoward past had gone from him; he had lived backward in that moment to the days before troubles and darkness came about his path; aspirations seemed to have taken the place of memory; he was a youth again, and Harry\'s face, as he looked at him, was loving and reverent.

It was already deep dusk when they turned[Pg 115] back, and only the faint reflections of the fires of sunset lingered in the sky. The green of grass and tree had faded to a sombre gray, and the green of the fantastically cut box hedge had deepened to black when they again passed under its misshapen shapes and monstrous prodigies. Somehow the look of it, cut out against the unspeakable softness and distance of the sky, struck Harry with something of an ominous touch.

"That must be seen to," he said, pointing to it. "Look at the horror of its shapes; it is like a collection of feverish dreams!"

"The old box hedge?" asked Mr. Francis. "If I were you I should not have it touched. See how Nature is striving to obliterate the intruding hand of man. How grotesque and quaint it appears in this light! How delightfully horrible!"

"Horrible, certainly," said Harry, "but I do not find delight there. Come, Uncle Francis, let us go in. It is already close upon dinner time, and one has to dress."

But the box hedge seemed to have a strange fascination for Mr. Francis, and he still lingered there, standing in the road, with his eye wandering down the lines of that nightmare silhouette.

"Indeed, I would not touch it, dear Harry," he said; "it is so grotesque and Gothic. What a thickness the hedge must be—eight feet at the least!"

"But it is hideous," replied the lad. "It is enough to frighten anybody."

[Pg 116]

"But it does not frighten you and me, or the gardeners either, we may suppose. At least, I have heard of no hysterics."

"That is probably true, but—— Well, come in, Uncle Francis. We shall be so late for dinner, and I am dying for it."

An hour later the two had finished dinner, and were waiting for coffee to be brought. Harry, after finishing his wine, had lit a cigarette, which had b............