For more than a month I journeyed and sojourned in a beautiful river valley and among the low foot-hills of the mountains.  The weather was fair, the scenery was pleasing, and at last I came to believe that I had passed the boundaries of Cathay.  I took no tablets from my little box.  I did not feel that I had need of them.

In the course of time I ceased to travel north-ward.  My vacation was not very near its end, but I chose to turn my face towards the scene of my coming duties.  I made a wide circuit, I rode slowly, and I stopped often.

One day I passed through a village, and at the outer edge of it a little girl, about four years old, tried to cross the road.  Tripping, she fell down almost in front of me.  It was only by a powerful and sudden exertion that I prevented myself from going over her, and as I wheeled across the road my machine came within two feet of her.  She lay there yelling in the dust.  I dismounted, and, picking her up I carried her to the other side of the road.  There I left her to toddle homeward while I went on my way.  I could not but sigh as I thought that I was again in Cathay.

Two days after this I entered Waterton.  There was another road, said to be a very pleasant one, which lay to the westward, and which would have taken me to Walford through a country new to me, but I wished to make no further explorations in Cathay, and if one journeys back upon a road by which he came he will find the scenery very different.

I spent the night at the hotel, and after breakfast I very reluctantly went to call upon the Willoughbys.  I forced myself to do this, for, considering the cordiality they had shown me, it would have required more incivility than I possessed to pass through the town without paying my respects.  But to my great joy none of the ladies was at home.  I hastened from the house with a buoyant step, and was soon speeding away, and away, and away.

The road was dry and hard, the sun was bright, but there was a fresh breeze in my face, and I rolled along at a swift and steady rate.  On, on I went, until, before the sun had reached its highest point, I wheeled out of the main road, rolled up a gravel path, and dismounted in front of the Holly Sprig Inn.

I leaned my bicycle against a tree and went in-doors.  The place did not seem so quiet as when I first saw it.  I had noticed a lady sitting under a tree in front of the house.  There was a nurse-maid attending a child who was playing on the grass.  Entering the hall, I glanced into the large room which I had called the “office,” and saw a man there writing at a table.

Presently a maid-servant came into the hall.  She was not one I had noticed before.  I asked if I could see Mrs. Chester, and she said she would go and look for her.  There were chairs in the hall, and I might have waited for her there, but I did not.  I entered the parlor, and was pleased to find it unoccupied.  I went to the upper end of the room, as far as possible from the door.