The Lake of Wine by Bernard Capes — Read

It was six o'clock of a cold September morning when Sir Robert -- or Mr. Tuke, as we must now know him -- woke in his room off the stable-yard of the old "George" inn at Winchester. Lying lazily snoozed amongst the pillows, he reviewed, with some amused satisfaction, the first courses of that scheme of reformation he had mapped out for himself, whereof two rather sleepless nights at Farnham and his present quarters -- the result of an abstention in the matter of numerous "nightcaps," which habit had made necessary to slumber -- were the prologue. Now, the little battle fought and won, he preened his moral feathers smugly, and felt clear-eyed and very good indeed. As to the mysterious estate -- the last stage on the journey to which he should cover that day -- he had soon learned to accept its acquisition with that sweetness of irresponsibility that was his most engaging and aggravating characteristic. But, after all, he had an excellent digestion -- in common with a great many men of the eighteenth century -- and was little inclined to dyspeptic brooding over problems.

Now, as he lay, his half-dreaming glance was arrested by a coloured print after George Morland hanging on the wall over against him. The like he remembered dimly to have known in a nursery of long ago -- a picture that had often set his young soul wandering by lanes of enchantment. Nothing could have served better to confirm and make abiding his present mood. He was a boy again, an apple-skinned Ulysses, with the limitless possibilities of the unknown before him. Without stain or guile he passed beyond the narrow margins of the print into a land that no mortal foot but his own had yet trodden.