But neither man cared to allude to the grinning shadow that sat at the feast and sent an icy chill now and again through the cheeriest jest and most jovial story.

The brisk run with the hounds that day had stirred and warmed their pulses; it was an evening for comfortable forgetting.

Later that night, in the stillness of his bedroom, with the dwindling noises of a retiring household dropping off one by one into ordered silence, a door shutting here, a fire being raked out there, the thoughts that had been held away came crowding in.

The body was tired, but the brain was not, and Yeovil lay awake with his thoughts for company.

The world grew suddenly wide again, filled with the significance of things that mattered, held by the actions of men that mattered.