The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-07-20
CHAPTER XIV.

The CynlC ana tnc OOunlry"oAAA'
 Radford Leicester stayed at the cottage among the Devonshire moors for several days. A more lonely place could not we'll be imagined. The cot tage itself stood in a little dell where trees grew, and a moorland stream babbled. Early spring flowers were to he seen there, and the smell of the bursting new life of bracken and heather and willow bush was sweet beyond words; but the view from the cottage was such as only one finds in a moorland district. For miles noth- ing was to be seen but a wild waste of nearly uninhabited land. The few cottages were occupied by those who had reclaimed strips of waste land, and obtained scanty living thereon. A month or two later the whole scene would be aglow with the bloom of fusze and heather; but now it was grim and grey and. under cloudy sky, forbidding. But Leicester was not sorry for this. The countryside, the loneliness, fitted in with his mood. He felt that the past was de- stroyed, and that the things which were once possible to him had come to an end. What had the future for him? What was he to do? That was the question he had to face.
 Immediately after he had realized that Olive Castlemaine was lost to him for ever, he had conceived wild schemes of revenge. He wanted to make Olive suffer as he had suffered; he swore that he would humble her pride to the dust, and that he would win the wager which for the present had lost him the woman he had loved. But that was all over now. He had become degraded in the eyes of the nation. He had no respect for the morality of the political world, but however low it might be, there was a kind of moral standard which people demanded in their representa- tives., They were not troubled be-
 
 that he had become intoxicated at the wrong time. He had actually appeafed on a public platform in a state of drunken imbecility. He had given the opponents of his party the whip hand, and he had in all proba- bility lost his party the election. That was his sin, and it would take years for them to forget it.
 Besides, he was not the kind of man to go back and plead forgive ness. His pride forbade him. What ,He, Radford Leicester, who had laughed at these clodhoppers, go back cap in hand, and plead with them to take him back. But what could he do? What had the future for him That was the question he had to face. Hope gone, faith gone, purpose gone, while the old craving for whisky dogged him at every step, what was there for him to do? Life was a Why should he seek to prolong it?
 And so he spent his days amidst the loneliness of the moors, thinking and breeding. He saw no newspa- pers, received no letters, had no wis., itors. He had told the old lady who kept the cottage that he wanted a week or two's quiet, and freedom from the hustle of the world. Be- sides, he had a big problem to solve, and he had come there to solve it. He gave his name as Robert Baxter; it was the first that came to his lips, and he spoke of himself as keenly interested in sociology. It happened that old Mrs. Sleeman had not the slightest idea what sociology meant but she had had several gentlemen in the past who had come to lodge with her; they had called themselves artists, and naturalists, and they had come pretty much in the same way as Leicester had come. They had been easy to please, they had paid her well, and when they had left had promised not only to come again, but to recommend her house to their quite welcome to her, and as he had no tastes that were difficult to satis- Ky, she hoped he would stay for a