CHAPTER III.
Mr.Chalk, with his mind full of the story he had just heard, walked homewards like a man in a dream.

The air was fragrant with spring and the scent of lilac revived memories almost forgotten.

It took him back forty years, and showed him a small boy treading the same road, passing the same houses.

Nothing had changed so much as the small boy himself; nothing had been so unlike the life he had pictured as the life he had led.

Even the blamelessness of the latter yielded no comfort; it savoured of a lack of spirit.
[Illustration: "A small boy treading the same road."] His mind was still busy with the past when he reached home.