CHAPTER I 

GUY POYNTON AGAIN 

"I Suppose," the boy said thoughtfully, "I must seem to you beastly ungrateful. You've been a perfect brick to me ever since that night. But I can't help being a bit homesick. You see, it was really the first time I'd ever been away from home for long, and though my little place isn't a patch on this, of course, still, I was born there, and I'm jolly fond of it." 

His companion nodded, and his dark eyes rested for a moment upon the other's face. Guy Poynton was idly watching the reapers at work in the golden valley below, and he did not catch his friend's expression. 

"You are very young, _mon cher ami_," he said. "As one grows older one demands change. Change always of scene and occupation. Now I, too, am most hideously bored here, although it is my home. For me to live is only possible in Paris--Paris, the beautiful." 

Guy looked away from the fields. He resented a little his friend's air of superiority. 

"There's only a year's difference in our ages!" he remarked. 

Henri de Bergillac smiled--this time more expressively than ever, and held out his hands. 

"I speak of experience, not years," he said. "You have lived for twenty years in a very delightful spot no doubt, but away from everything which makes life endurable, possible even, for the child of the cities. I have lived for twenty-one years mostly in Paris. Ah, the difference!" 

Guy shrugged his shoulders, and leaned back in his chair. 
What is the difference in ages between the friends?
"There's only a year's difference in our ages!" he remarked. 