While I think you have made a grave mistake, that is your affair." When Clarke had gone, Challoner left the house in a restless mood and paced slowly up and down among his shrubbery.

He wished to be alone in the open air.

Bright sunshine fell upon him, the massed evergreens cut off the wind, and in a sheltered border spear-like green points were pushing through the soil in promise of the spring.

Challoner knew them all, the veined crocus blades, the tight-closed heads of the hyacinths, and the twin shoots of the daffodils, but, fond as he was of his garden, he gave them scanty attention.
Clarke's revelation had been a shock.

With his sense of duty and family pride, the Colonel had, when the news of the frontier disaster first reached him, found it almost impossible to believe that his nephew had been guilty of shameful cowardice; and now it looked as if the disgrace might be brought still closer home.