The Four Feathers

ermod Eustace he had been fetched against his will to the house by the Lennon River in Donegal, and there, to his surpris

ch had the very sob of the waves. Durrance had listened wondering, for the violin had spoken to him of many things of which the girl who played it could know nothing. It had spoken of long perilous journeys and the faces of strange countries; of the silver way across moonlit seas; of the beckoning voices from the under edges of the desert. It had taken a deeper, a more mysterious tone. It had told of great joys, quite unattainable, and of great griefs too, eternal, and with a

f-past nine by the clump of lilacs and laburnums at the end of the sand, but Harry Feversham did not join him that morning, nor indeed for the next three weeks. Ever since the two men had

rew to a certainty; and when at last Fev

go out to Egypt on General Graham's staff. There's

trange to Durrance, even at that moment of his good luck, that Harry Feversham should envy hi

sympathetically, "that your

in silence. Then, as they came to th

e day you dined with m

nce, turning in his sadd

t Durrance rode silently forward. Again Harry Feversham was conscious of a reproach in his fr

for the life of me I can't help wishing that we had be

-ni

so

of their early green, and since the May was late that year, its blossoms still hung delicately white like snow upon the branches and shone red a

e we bathed in Sandford

s morning a volume in their book of life was ended; and since the volume had been a pleasant one to read, and they did not know

, Jack, when you come

at that anticipatory "us." If his left hand tightened upon the

I could never pity a man who died on active service

ood many years of life. So that he uttered it without melancholy or any sign of foreboding. Even so, however, he had a fear that perhaps his friend might p

ps, to put up with it. But what in the world should I do if I had to sit in a chair all my days? It makes me shiver to think of i

of the Row they stopped, shook hands, and with the curtest of nods parted. Feversham rode out

the restlessness had grown upon him, so that "Guessens," even when he had inherited it with its farms and lands, had remained always in his thoughts as a place to come home to rather than an estate to occupy a life. He purposely exaggerated that restlessness now, and purposely set against it words which Fev

ged mimosas, the brown sand at his feet spread out in a widening circumference and took the bright colour of honey; and upon the empty sand black stones began to heap themselves shapelessly like coa

ce's neighbour at Southpool, and by a year or two his elder-a tall woman, remarkable for the many shades of her thick brown h

ance. "Two special items. One, H

asked the l

eet that Harry first met her; and I introduced him

erstood; and it was plain

he cried. "They wi

othing to p

ighed as though with relief

st. I go out on Gen

a look of anxiety into her eyes, a

ad, I suppose,"

oice left he

nd the sooner the better. I will come an

lady. She was handsome in a queer, foreign way not so uncommon along the coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall, and she had good hair, and was always well dressed. Moreover, she was friendly. And at that point Durrance's knowledge of her came to an end. Perhaps her chief merit in his eyes was that she had made friends with Ethne Eustace. But he was to become better acquainted w

ad ended, Durrance found himself beset by a strange illusion. He was leaning upon the bulwarks, idly wondering whether this was his last view of England, and with a wish that some one of his friends had come down to see him go, when it seemed to him suddenly that his wish was answered; for he caught a glimpse of a man standing beneath a gas-lamp, and that man was of the stature and wore the likeness of Harry Feversham. Durrance rubbed his eyes and looked again. But the wind made the tongue of light flicker uncertainly within the glass; the rain, too, blurr

ed, at the top of

t was an illusion, he repeated; it was a coincidence. It was the face of a stranger very like to Harry Feversham's. It could not be Feversham's, because the face which

legram and the suspense which the long perusal of it had caused. Moreover, his newspaper