It was some time in the middle of the night, about a week after Bexell had sent him back the papers, that he awoke suddenly and completely, and there before him, as clearly as though it had been written in letters of fire on the black wall, he saw the title of the wished-for book.  It was the book mentioned by Platzoff in his prefatory note:  The Confessions of Parthenio the Mystic.  The knowledge had come to him like a revelation.  How stupid he must have been never to have thought of it before!  That night he slept no more.

Next morning he went to one of the most famous bookdealers in the metropolis.  The book inquired for by Ducie was not known to the man.  But that did not say that there was no such work in existence.  Through his agents at home and abroad inquiry should be made, and the result communicated to Captain Ducie.  Therewith the latter was obliged to content himself.  Three days later came a pressing note of invitation from Platzoff.

CHAPTER XI

BON REPOS.

On a certain fine morning towards the end of May, Captain Ducie took train at Euston Square, and late the same afternoon was set down at Windermere.  A fly conveyed himself and his portmanteau to the edge of the lake.  Singling out one from the tiny fleet of pleasure boats always to be found at the Bowness landing-stage, Captain Ducie seated himself in the stern and lighted his cigar.  The boatman’s sinewy arms soon pulled him out into the middle of the lake, when the head of the little craft was set for Bon Repos.

The sun was dipping to the western hills.  In his wake he had left a rack of torn and fiery cloud, as though he had rent his garments in wrath and cast them from him.  Soft, grey mists and purple shadows were beginning to strike upward from the vales, but on the great shoulders of Fairfield, and on the scarred fronts of other giants further away, the sunshine lingered lovingly.  It was like the hand of Childhood caressing the rugged brows of Age.

With that glorious panorama which crowns the head of the lake before his eyes, with the rhythmic beat of the oars and the soft pulsing of the water in his ears, with the blue smoke-rings of his cigar rising like visible aspirations through the evening air, an unwonted peace, a soft brooding quietude, began to settle down upon the Captain’s world-worn spirit; and through the stillness came a faint whisper, like his mother’s voice speaking from the far-off years of childhood, recalling to his memory things once known, but too long forgotten; lessons too long despised, but with a vital truth underlying them which he seemed never to have realised till now.  Suddenly the boat’s keel grazed the shingly strand, and there before him, half shrouded in the shadows of evening, was Bon Repos.