The lassitude and _ennui_ inseparable from a life spent for the most part in the business centres of London, had rolled away like a noxious mist from his mind, and he was well-nigh ready to "begin life again," as he told himself, with a smile at his own folly.
"No wonder that the old-world philosophers and scientists sought for the _elixir vitae_!" he thought.

"No wonder they felt that the usual tenure is too short for all that a man might accomplish, did he live well and wisely enough to do justice to all the powers with which nature has endowed him.

I am myself inclined to think that the 'Tree of Life' exists,--perhaps its leaves are the 'leaves of the Daura,' for which that excellent fellow Matt Peke is looking.

Or it may be the 'Secta Croa'!" He smiled,--and having arrived at the end of the path which he had followed from the door of the "Trusty Man," he saw before him a descending bank, which sloped into the highroad, a wide track white with thick dust stretching straight away for about a mile and then dipping round a broad curve of land, overarched with trees.

He sat down for a few minutes on the warm grass, giving himself up to the idle pleasure of watching the birds skimming through the clear blue sky,--the bees bouncing in and out of the buttercups,--the varicoloured butterflies floating like blown flower-petals on the breeze,--and he heard a distant bell striking the half-hour after eleven.