regarded him as an operation of Nature.  So he lived his life in his colourless fashion, rousing no hate, gaining no love, and fulfilling his duties as though his own epitaph were an abiding vision to him.  He cared for no enjoyments, and did not particularly like to see other people enjoying themselves.  He seemed to fancy that laughter should be taken like the Sacrament, and, for his own part, he preferred not being a communicant.  When his only son was killed in a pitiful frontier skirmish, the old man rode out as usual on the day following the receipt of the ill news.  The gamekeeper said that he drew up his cob alongside the fence of a paddock wherein was kept an aged pony that the heir had ridden long ago.  He watched the stumbling pensioner cropping the bright grass for a few minutes, breathed heavily, turned the cob into the road again, and went on with sharp eyes glancing emotionless.  His daughter-in-law died soon after, and he assumed sole charge of the young Ellington whom we have seen making a forlorn pilgrimage under the trees.  The young man had received a queer sort of nondescript education.  All the Ellingtons for a generation or two back had gone in due course to Eton and Oxford, but no such conventional training was vouchsafed to the latest of the family.  The hand of the private tutor had been heavy upon him, and he was brought up absolutely without a notion of what his own future might be.  He had mooned about among books to some trifling extent, but the taste for study had never taken him.  The silly mode of culture which he had undergone availed nothing against the instincts of his race.  His grandfather was a sort of living aberration—­a queer variety such as Nature will sometimes interpolate amid the most steady of strains; but young Ellington’s moods, and tendencies, and capabilities reverted to the old line.  Yet, despite his restless energy, despite his incapacity for that active thought which makes solitude bearable, he was crushed into the mould that the Squire had prepared for him.  His distractions were few, and in his vigorous mind, with its longing for instant action, its continual revolt against self-contained speculation, there arose a dull fear of the future, a longing for deliverance.  It was not a merry existence for a young man who heard the brave currents of life sounding around and calling him vaguely to come and adventure himself with the rest.  He knew that the sons of the men who laughed at his grandfather laughed also at him, and regarded him with a somewhat impertinent wonder, but he dared explain himself to none, and dared seek companionship with none.  This is why he looked so listless as he lounged toward the sea that fine afternoon.  There was enough all round him to please anyone with an eye for the quiet beauty of inanimate things.  The lights slid and quivered on the golden windings of the walk.  Here and there the beams that came through were toned into a kind of floating greenness that looked glad