he asked.

"I do not know; you must ask our host."

"Pardon me. I think you know very well," said the professor. "I should
say you belonged to a class of persons who know very well what they
think."

"How do you judge?"

"That is, of all questions a man can ask, the most difficult to answer.
How do you judge of anything?"

"By applying the test of past experience to present fact," I replied.

"Then past experience is that by which I judge. How can you expect me to
tell you the whole of my past experience, in order that you may
understand how my judgment is formed? It would take years."

"You are a pair of very singular men," remarked John Carvel. "You seem
to take to argument as fish to the water. You ought to be successful in
a school of walking philosophers."

John seemed more depressed than I had ever seen him, and only made an
observation from time to time, as though to make a show of hospitality.
The professor interested me, but I could see that we were boring Carvel.
The conversation languished, and before long the latter proposed that we
should go into the drawing-room for half an hour before bed-time.

We found the ladies seated around the fire. Their voices fell suddenly
as we entered the room, and all of them looked towards John and the
professor, as though expecting something. It struck me that they had
been talking of some matter which was not intended for our ears.

"We have been making plans for Christmas," said Mrs. Carvel, as though
to break the awkward silence that followed our entrance.

VIII.

Early on the following morning John Carvel came to my room. He looked
less anxious than on the previous night, but he was evidently not
altogether his former self.

"Would you care to drive to the station and meet those boys?" he asked,
cheerfully.

The weather was bright and frosty, and I was glad enough of an excuse
for being alone for half an hour with my friend. I assented, therefore,
to his proposition, and presently we were rattling along the hard road
through the park. The hoar-frost was on the trees and on the blue-green
frozen grass beneath them, and on the reeds and sedges beside the pond,
which was overspread with a sheet of black ice. The breath flew from the
horses' nostrils in white clouds to right and left, and the low morning
sun flashed back from the harness, and made the little icicles and laces
of frost upon the trees shine like diamonds.

"Carvel," I said presently,