"I would like to thank you for your kindness and comradeship to me during the voyage. Those days will ever remain as a golden memory to me.
"Having in mind your words when we lunched together in the garden of that little hotel at Teneriffe, I dare to inscribe myself,
It was not the letter he longed to write, yet he dared not write more explicitly. Honour forbade the smallest hint at the strange position in which he found himself; diffidence held him back from writing the words his heart was crying to her. Bald and flat as he felt the letter to be, he could do no better. It must go as it stood. He headed it with the address of his present rooms, giving his landlady instructions to forward all letters to the post office at Byestry.
One letter, bearing a Scottish postmark, alone came for him after his departure. It remained for close on two months on the table of the dingy little hall. Then, fearing lest Antony's receipt of it should betray her own carelessness, Mrs. Dobbin consigned it unopened to the kitchen fire.
Kingsleigh is the station for Byestry, which is eight miles from it. It is a small town, not much larger than a mere village, lying, as its name designates, on the shores of the estuary, which runs from the sea up to Kingsleigh. Chorley Old Hall stands on high wooded land, about a mile from the coast, having a view across the estuary, and out to the sea itself.
It was a grey day, with a fine mist of a rain descending, when Antony, with Josephus at his heels, stepped on to Kingsleigh platform. In the road beyond the station, a number of carts and carriages, and a couple of closed buses, were collected. The drivers of the said vehicles stood by the gate through which the passengers must pass, ready to accost those by whom they had been already ordered, or pounce upon likely fares.
"Be yü Michael Field?" demanded a short wiry man, as Antony, carrying an old portmanteau, and followed by Josephus, emerged through the gate.
For a moment Antony stared, amazed. Then he remembered.
"That's güd," responded the man cheerfully. "'It the first nail, so to speak. T'Doctor sent I wi' t'trap. Coom along. Got any more baggage?"
Antony replied in the negative. Three minutes later he was seated in the trap, Josephus at his feet. He turned up the collar of his mackintosh, and pulled down his tweed cap over his eyes.