CHAPTER VI—INVALIDATION.

Nine o’clock of a summer’s morning in rural England is an hour of delight if the weather be fine. The birds sing whether there be war or peace in the land; the trees and hedgerows and the flowers make a path to fairy-land of the narrow lanes; but the man who trusts to these winding thoroughfares, unless he know the country well, is like to find himself in an enchanted maze, and Armstrong, stopping his horse at an intersection, standing in his stirrups the better to view the landscape, wrinkled his brow in perplexit…