For this winter, at any rate, he would hunt and do a little shooting, entertain a few of his neighbours and make friends with any congenial fellow-sportsmen who might be within reach.
Next year things would be different; he would have had time to look round him, to regain something of his aforetime vigour of mind and body.

Next year, when the hunting season was over, he would set about finding out whether there was any nobler game for him to take a hand in.

He would enter into correspondence with old friends who had gone out into the tropics and the backwoods--he would do something.
So he told himself, but he knew thoroughly well that he had found his level.

He had ceased to struggle against the fascination of his present surroundings.

The slow, quiet comfort and interest of country life appealed with enervating force to the man whom death had half conquered.
The pleasures of the chase, well-provided for in every detail, and dovetailed in with the assured luxury of a well-ordered, well-staffed establishment, were exactly what he wanted and exactly what his life down here afforded him.