past, but partly also because his present seemed to me a fleeting phase of sheer insanity, which would end as suddenly as it had supervened. The form was too bad to be true, even if Coplestone had ever shown it before; and there was now some evidence that he had not.

Delavoye had come down from town with eyes as bright as Ronnie's. 

"You remember Sawrey-Biggerstaff by name? He was second for the Diamonds the second year Coplestone won them, and he won them himself the year after. I met him today with a man who lunched me at the United University. I told him we had Coplestone down here, and asked him if it was true that he had ever been off the rails like this before, only without breathing a word about his being off them now. Sawrey-Biggerstaff swore that he had never heard of such a libel, or struck a more abstemious hound than Harry Coplestone, or ever heard of him being or ever having been anything else! So you must see what it all means, Gilly."

"It means that he's never got over the loss of his wife."

"But that happened nearly three years ago. Ronnie told me. Why didn't the old boy break out before? Why save it all up for Witching Hill?"

"I know what you're going to say."

"But isn't it obvious? Our wicked old man drank like an aquarium. His vices are the weeds of this polluted soil; they crop up one after the other, and with inveterate irony he's allotted this one to the noblest creature on the place. It's for us to save him by hook or crook--or rather it's my own hereditary job."

"And how do you mean to set about it?"

"You'll be angry with me, Gilly, but I shan't be happy till I see his house on your hands again. It's the only chance--to drive him into fresh woods and pastures new!"

I was angry. I declined to discuss the matter any further; but I stuck to my opinion that the cloud would vanish as quickly as it had gathered. And Coplestone of all men was man enough to stand his ground and live it down.

But first he must take himself in hand, instead of which I had to own that he was going from bad to worse. He was a man of leisure, and he drank as though he had found his vocation in the bottle. He was a lonely man, and he drank as though drink was a friend in need and not the deadliest foe. He was the only drunkard I ever knew who drank with impenitent zest; and I saw 

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