His own country had never seemed in his eyes so comfort- yielding and to-be-desired as it did now when it had passed into alien keeping and become a prison land as much as a homeland.

London with its thin mockery of a Season, and its chattering horde of empty-hearted self- seekers, held no attraction for him, but the spell of English country life was weaving itself round him, now that the charm of the desert was receding into a mist of memories.

The waning of pleasant autumn days in an English woodland, the whir of game birds in the clean harvested fields, the grey moist mornings in the saddle, with the magical cry of hounds coming up from some misty hollow, and then the delicious abandon of physical weariness in bathroom and bedroom after a long run, and the heavenly snatched hour of luxurious sleep, before stirring back to life and hunger, the coming of the dinner hour and the jollity of a well-chosen house-party.
That was the call which was competing with that other trumpet-call, and Yeovil knew on which side his choice would incline..