Now in that little cell he opened the windows of his soul and let his mind go forth. Radiant, exuberant, it escaped from its cage. It came forth singing a Te Deum. Only a few more hours and dawn would break. His body would know the liberty he had already given to his mind. He was too happy to sleep. He lay wakeful and very still on his bed, the silence only occasionally broken by the footfall of a warder in the passage outside.

The night wore on. Gradually the stars dropped back one by one into the sky, and away in the east a streak of saffron light appeared. It was day at last.

Six hours later a man was walking along a country road. His step was light and his face held up to meet the fresh March wind that was blowing across the fields and hedges.

[Pg 4]

[Pg 4]

Daffodils nodded their golden heads at him from the banks as he passed, and tiny green buds on the brown branches were pushing forward to the light. The whole world was vital, radiant, teeming with growth.

The man held one hand in the pocket of his grey flannel coat, his fingers pressing on two envelopes which lay there. They had been handed to him just before he left the great grey prison. He had not yet opened them. For one thing, he wanted to put a certain distance between his present self and the past three years before he broke the seals. For another thing, he was denying himself, prolonging the pleasure of anticipation.

Now he saw a stile before him, set in the hedge a little way back from the road, and with a patch of grass before it. In the grass gleamed a few pink-tipped daisies.

The man went across the grass and sat down on the stile. He pulled the two letters from his pocket and looked at them. One was addressed in a masculine handwriting, small, square, and very firm. The other writing was delicate but larger. It was evidently that of a woman.

He opened the firmly addressed envelope first, [Pg 5]and pulled out its contents. A strip of pink paper fluttered to the ground, falling among the daisies. He picked it up without looking at it while he read the contents of the letter.

[Pg 5]

CONTENTS

“I have no desire that you should starve, and therefore send you the enclosed. Kindly understand, however, that I do not wish 

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