He was never tired of talking of it, of taking them by the hand, as it were, and leading them from place to place, to the stream, the village, the old stone church, the meadows and fields and hedges, the deep shady lanes, and, above all, to the dear old ivied house with its gables and tall chimneys.

So many times had his father described it that the old place was printed like a map on his mind, and was like a picture which kept its brightness even after the image of his boyhood's home in Australia had become faded and pale.

With that mental picture to guide him he believed that he could go to that angle by the porch where the flycatchers bred every year and find their nest; where in the hedge the blackberries were most abundant; where the elders grew by the stream from which he could watch the moorhens and watervoles; that he knew every fence, gate, and outhouse, every room and passage in the old house.

Through all his busy years that picture never grew less beautiful, never ceased its call, and at last, possessed of sufficient capital to yield him a modest income for the rest of his life, he came home.

What he was going to do in England he did not consider.