“The time is certainly becoming short,” said Lord Newhaven.  “He is right in saying there is only a week left.  If it were not for the scandal for the boys, and if I thought he would really hold to the compact, I would meet him, but he won’t.  He flinched when he drew lots.  He won’t.  He has courage enough to stand up in front of me for two minutes, and take his chance, but not to blow his own brains out.  No.  And if he knew what is in store for him if he does not, he would not have courage to face that either.  Nor should I if I were in his shoes, poor devil.  The first six foot of earth would be good enough for me.”

He threw the letter with its envelope into the fire and watched it burn.

Then he took up the gold pen, which his wife had given him, examined the nib, dipped it very slowly in the ink, and wrote with sudden swiftness.

“Allow me to remind you that you made no objection at the time to the manner of our encounter and my choice of weapons, by means of which publicity was avoided.  The risk was equal.  You now, at the last moment, propose that I should run it a second time, and in a manner to cause instant scandal.  I must decline to do so, or to reopen the subject, which had received my careful consideration before I decided upon it.  I have burned your letter, and desire you will burn mine.”

“Poor devil!” said Lord Newhaven, putting the letter, not in the post-box at his elbow, but in his pocket.

“Loftus and I did him an ill turn when we pulled him out of the water.”

* * * * *

The letter took its own time, for it had to avoid possible pitfalls.  It shunned the company of the other Westhope letters, it avoided the village post-office, but after a day’s delay it was launched, and lay among a hundred others in a station pillar-box.  And then it hurried, hurried as fast as express train could take it, till it reached its London address, and went softly up-stairs, and laid itself, with a few others, on Hugh’s breakfast-table.

For many weeks since his visit at Wilderleigh Hugh had been like a man in a boat without oars, drifting slowly, imperceptibly on the placid current of a mighty river, who far away hears the fall of Niagara droning like a bumblebee in a lily cup.

Long ago, in the summer, he had recognized the sound, had realized the steep agony towards which the current was bearing him, and had struggled horribly, impotently, against the inevitable.  But of late, though the sound was ever in his ears, welling up out of the blue distance, he had given up the useless struggle, and lay still in the sunshine watching the summer woods slide past and the clouds sail away, always away and away, to the birthplace of the river, to that little fluttering pulse in the heart of the hills which a woman’s hand might cover, the infant pulse of the great river to be.