The body grew almost visibly; his very clothes hung on him differently; he was no longer a nonentity yawning beneath an ancient pedigree and title; he was an aggressive personality. The boy in him rushed into manhood, as it were, while still retaining boyish speech and gesture. It was uncanny. ‘We’ll go more than once, I vote; go again and again. This is a place and a half. It’s my place with a vengeance——!’

‘Not exactly the kind of place your father would wish you to linger in,’ his tutor interrupted. ‘But we might stay a day or two—especially as you like it so.’

‘It’s far better than the towns and the rotten embassies; better than fifty Simlas and Bombays and filthy Cairos,’ cried the other eagerly. ‘It’s just the thing I need, and when I get home I’ll show ’em something. I’ll prove it. Why, they simply won’t know me!’ He laughed, and his face shone with a kind of vivid radiance in the glare of the electric light. The transformation was more than curious. Waiting a moment to see if more would follow, Hendricks moved slowly then towards the door, with the remark that it was advisable now to go to bed since they would be up late the following night—when he noticed for the first time that the pillow and sheets were crumpled and that the bed had already been lain in. The first suspicion flashed back upon him with new certainty.

Lord Ernie was already taking off his heavy coat, preparatory to undressing. He looked up quickly at the altered tone of voice.

‘Bindy,’ the tutor said with a touch of gravity, ‘you were alone just now—weren’t you—of course?’

The other sat up from stooping over his boots. With his hands resting on the bed behind him, he looked straight into his companion’s eyes. Lying was not among his faults. He answered slowly after a decided interval.

‘I—I was asleep,’ he whispered, evidently trying to be accurate, yet hesitating how to describe the thing he had to say, ‘and had a dream—one of my real, vivid dreams when something happens. Only, this time, it was more real than ever before. It was’—he paused, searching for words, then added—‘sweet and awful.’

And Hendricks repeated the surprising sentence. ‘Sweet and awful, Bindy! What in the world do you mean, boy?’

Lord Ernie seemed puzzled himself by the choice of words he used.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ he went on honestly, ‘only I mean that it was awfully real and splendid, a bit of my own life somewhere—somewhere else—where it lies hidden away behind a lot of days and months that choke it up. I can never get at it except in woods and places, quite alone, hearing the wind or making fires, or—in sleep.’ He hid his face in his hands a moment, then looked up with a hint of censure in his eyes. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that such things were done? You never told me,’ he repeated.

‘I didn’t know it myself until this evening. Leysin——’

‘I thought you knew everything,’ Lord Ernie broke in in that same half-chiding tone.

‘Monsieur Leysin told me to-night for the first time,’ said Hendricks firmly, ‘that such people and such practices existed. Till now I had never dreamed that such superstitions survived anywhere in the world at all.’ He resented the reproach. But he was also aware that the boy resented his authority. For the first time his ascendency seemed in question; his voice, his eye, his manner did not quell as formerly. ‘So you mean, when you say “sweet and awful,” that it was very real to you?’ he asked. He insisted now with purpose. ‘Is that it, Bindy?’

The other replied eagerly enough. ‘Yes, that’s it, I think—partly.