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As he walked up Starvencrow Hill from Conster, the slope was alight with golden broom and with the green and yellow tops of the young trees that John Douce had planted round his steading. They rose up the hill in a wall of broken fire, pale, gleaming coloured balls round the thatched hump of La Petite Douce standing among them. Over them the blue of the May-day sky ached cloudlessly. . . . Gervase's eyes stared past them to a darker landscape, and saw instead of their bright colours and soft shapes the dark outline of the Château le Thisay under the stars, with the shadow which was the Clos de l'Eternel—in the Pays du Néant. . . . Strange names, that had rung hollowly to him then—they were dead echoes now—the Field of Eternity, the Land of Nothingness. He saw himself slipping through the darkness from the farm, along the rutted track, past the tall ghosts of the agrimony, toward the light that hung in the castle tower.

That seemed another man from the disillusioned clerk now plodding his way home. What would have happened if the King had not enjoyed his own again? He had almost refused to return with his father to England, for he had felt himself on the verge of discovering some tremendous secret of power. But he had not been sure . . . he had hesitated . . . memories had called him—memories of green slopes and buttercups and sun-dappled brooks, queer intrusions into the darkness of his new quest. Besides, his father had been so sure that they would all make their fortunes out of Conster Furnace and the King's gratitude—enticing him back with the bait of riches and honour and then poking him into the Vicarage of Leasan. He should have gone back to France—he could have gone, but he had not. He had not felt quite sure . . . and there had been that night when the Abbé had warned him, and that dreadful experiment in the kitchen under the tower. . . .